The first (and most) of this article is not happy, or hopeful. It is the opposite. I would recommend not reading this if you are in a dark place. Or maybe read it especially if you are and don’t want to feel so alone? Just do whatever you want but protect your energy.
Specifically trigger warning for the very first paragraph because it mentions specific recent, awful, and true events.
My contemplations this morning, from a very self-centered viewpoint: I can’t scroll my phone when I first wake up or right before bed or I am inevitably bombarded with horrible news. Just in the past 24 hours, I have been scrolling though memes about depression only interrupted by true articles of dogs drowning at their doggy daycare because first responders didn’t come quickly, a man live streaming shooting his wife in front of his baby, the baby later being found screaming in a pool of blood, the new pesticides that have been created to find a loophole in our “organic” labels, satire about Texas schools closing because it’s too hot to be a safe environment for shootings, lives being lost due to natural and unnatural disasters around the world. I often, much, much too often feel physically ill after these things come across my feed.
I do curate my feed to be mostly feel-good, or funny, but the few true and educational sources I follow, (because that’s how I take my news as many of us do today – social media) are nearly unbearable to read. My heart feels broken again and again. It affects my ability to sleep. I often do feel very unwell after even a few minutes of scrolling. Who wouldn’t?
It seems those around me are either blind and naive to it all, or equally distressed, or somewhere in between, and I suppose somewhere in between is where we all are…maybe where we all should be in order to survive?
I am periodically consumed by the overwhelming, sickening fear of everything myself and my child are ingesting on a daily basis. The chlorine and fluoride filled water, the dyes, sugars, inflammatory seed oils. The pesticides. I know all we can do is our best but it’s overwhelming.
The old houses i’ve lived in, filled with mold, probably lead in the paint. The hundreds of fast food meals i’ve eaten. The eating disorder that probably caused permanent destruction to my blood sugar levels not to mention tooth decay. The dentist said I brush my teeth too hard, wearing down my gums, and gums are an indicator of overall health. Terrifying.
I just now finally got some cast iron skillets again and a water filter for the kitchen, as I had a busy year what with leaving everything I own behind and leaving a toxic home and relationship. My sweet baby was in that environment for the first ten months of his life. It’s terrifying what type of life that is setting him up for.
My past haunts me. The cigarettes i’ve smoked and tanning beds I frequented. The parasites that probably live in my body, as they do in everyones. The things I’ve said and done, the men (boys, really) who I shouldn’t have given the time of day to, yet I did, again and again, to the point where everyone got hurt.
The thought of all of my grandparents and what they had to endure and survive, the trauma both my parents endured as children, the trauma my brother and I were brought up through. Yes, each generation does a little better, but each generation fucks up their kids in a new, different, way, and now I am subjecting my own child to that. Why on earth would I do that.
I were to get pregnant right now and need an abortion, in order to not subject yet another child to the horrors of this world and a single, still un-fully-healed mother, I would have to travel to a different state. There are young, young teenage girls, children themselves, who are being forced to birth the child of their rapist. Right here where we live. In a country where people claim to be obsessed with freedom.
People are suffering. Animals are suffering. The whole world is suffering.
Global Warming. Starvation. Slavery. Torture. Abuse. Human Trafficking. Hundreds unhoused. Separation. Hate Crimes. It’s no wonder everyone has mental health disorders. You would have to be truly insane to not be affected, disheartened, or distressed in some way by it all.
Then we are being fed food that is making us ill. Drinking water that is poison. Being pumped full of pills and medications that are ruining our lives.
Sending our children to school where they may be shot while they are being brainwashed.
I was homeschooled, and I don’t believe that is the answer either.
Can you buy your way into clean foods, the best schooling, safety? Perhaps in some ways, yet the wage gap is increasing.
People go through partner breakups, friendship breakups, the loss of pets, the loss of loved ones, every day. Every moment, someone is experiencing a loss.
I know, failed relationships are not failures, but lessons. I know there is a partner for every season and evolution of who you are, and they don’t always seem to go in order. Yet I have a handful of people now who knew me, spent hours of time with me, who we gave our bodies, hearts, time, and souls to one another and now they are just strangers to me. Part of me died with each relationship. That’s painful (as much as it is right, and good).
People are struggling to pay rent, to feed their families, to be safe, to survive.
I feel sick. I am overwhelmed.
When I read or hear “Well, we are all in this together, everyone feels that way.” it is meant to be comforting, yet to me it is even more terrifying. Everyone feels this way? It’s normal?! It’s really hard not to just say Fuck it, i’m out.
Do all people that speak out about these things get abandoned and attacked? Is it terribly dangerous, on a personal or societal level, to be vocal, to be a voice of change?
I want to be an ally to all that are oppressed. I have to protect this small white male baby as a straight white woman, and yet still I am scared. I can’t imagine the fear and trauma that comes along with being anything else. We are all one, yet we have been so separate and divided.
Why do so, so many people still think it is okay to be racist, homophobic, transphobic, sexist? Why are there still so many unhoused people, unhoused CHILDREN in a society of so much excess? Why do we KNOW about lobbying and big food and big pharma and the school to prison pipeline yet nothing is changing? I truly don’t understand why those in power just seem to be evil.
I know about these things yet I am still living in a bubble myself.I would love to help house people and feed people and save animals and save the planet yet I am still creating trash, turning a blind eye, spending my time at the gym and going to eat with friends instead of spending every moment of my time serving my fellow brothers and sisters and HUMANS and the animals, the planet.
We know all this, we are living this nightmare, yet we are just performing tasks and checking things off to do lists. I don’t blame anyone for wanting to give up, or hide, or ignore it all into oblivion.
I have wanted to ignore it all, mask the pain by drinking it away or eating it away or fucking it away or just going to school and work and being a good little sheep, good little worker bee member of society.
I ant to fight the patriarchy, the sexist norms, yet i’ve spent hours, days, years of my life doing things for the sole purpose of looking pretty, to please men. First I dated people I wanted to look smaller for, then I dated someone who I felt I needed to be bigger for. All of these things have burnt me out. I’m exhausted of trying to have a tiny waist and bigger bust and booty. I’m tired of trying to eat healthy and be healthy and pure while also fitting in and numbing just enough that I can keep going. Just enough is hidden behind the veil that i’m not completely crushed by the weight of the world.
My credit card debt, the car and student loans i’m paying off seem never ending. I’ve had COVID-19 three times and am worried about side effects of that. I have also had both parts of the COVID-19 vaccine and am equally if not more terrified of what that’s doing in my body. I need to protect my precious son but that if I choose vaccines regularly to protect him, what if they are also causing irreversible damage? I have to hold him down while he is screaming and crying so they can inject something into him that isn’t even consistently best practice or the same state to state, but I have to lean on the side of science as a parent right? (These are just all my own thoughts – I honestly think each parent should do what they believe is right for their kiddo and that’s all anyone can do. There are many risks to being a human being in general.)
It’s beyond difficult to “human”, no matter what avatar your soul chooses or how you manifest. I carry immense guilt that I brought a soul into this world, but I also know it is part of my path, and his now.
There is so much more that I haven’t even talked about here, of course. I feel like even beginning to touch on a tiyn, teeny, portion of the world’s problems is almost pointless because there is a vast amount and everyone is suffering in some way. Everything is relative. A never-ending list of horrors that is upon us as humans living here on earth. If you are an alien reading this, welcome to the shit show.
I want to say here: but this is our path as humans! There is hope! Manifest! Lead with love! Tap into your highest self! All we have to do is remember we are all one and each do our part and the world will be saved!
And all of that is true. That is what most of my writing with Eclectic Purpose is about. The honoring of what is as neither good nor bad. That is how I try to choose to show up every day.
Yet we all know this stuff (even if we are trying to pretend we don’t). The horrible, excruciating, experience that is life as a human on planet earth. I believe a huge part of the reason depression is so rampant is because so many of us are tired of living this human existence. Everyone is feeling divided. We are angry. We are in so, so much collective pain.
We can not look away all the time. We MUST choose to know. We must choose to look at the uncomfortable and the painful and the things we want to avert our eyes from because if a train wrecks right in front of us and we walk away, doing nothing to help the victims, then are we not also part of the problem? Even if we say “Well, I didn’t cause the train wreck!” or “I am anti train wreck.” or “The train wreck is too big for me to fix on my own so I choose to do nothing.”
Ignorance is bliss but that isn’t fair. No one should be free until everyone is. Whether you are a rich, straight, white, Christian, trump supporting person or an unhoused, LGBTQ, BIPOC, atheist, or anywhere in between, you are affected by and participating in this fucked up society whether you like it or not. These mentioned labels are also not necessarily opposites, right? We are all supposed to be loving, and love one another no matter what, even when we don’t agree? How are we ever going to get to a point of live and let live?
I want to say we should all respect and love one another and let people choose their own path, but what if that path is discrimination, oppression, or hate towards someone else? What if the other person’s idea of living in righteousness is controlling another’s body, or controlling someone else’s life, or valuing one human life over another?
Yes, then that is wrong. Then that is not their true authentic path, because if we were all living in our own authentic path we would all want the greatest and highest good for all. We would all want true equality, access to all basic needs, and the freedom to live and love whoever you want, just as you are. In safety. In peace. Regardless of who you are or how much money you have, you would have access to all basic needs, including healthcare and bodily autonomy.
Okay, but do I know how to fix it all single-handedly? No. No one person does. So once again the feeling of overwhelm and dread arises and I am tempted to either numb out, look away, or say screw this pointless life.
Honestly, even as I write this, I am questioning my own political correctness. Part of me is saying I shouldn’t even share this at all because I am not qualified to speak on these things. I have not lived so many, many painful experiences that millions of others have. Am I just sharing this for ego? For validation? To feel like I am doing something, anything, about the horrifying things that are going on everywhere, all the time? Is it right for me to even talk about my own experience or share these fears without giving them the weight and merit they deserve? Should I even be talking if when instead of giving that five-dollar bill to the unhoused person on the corner I used it to buy a fucking mug at Target? When I already have four other mugs? Then proceeded to make coffee and post a photo of that coffee in that mug on Instagram and enjoy dopamine hits from people “liking” it?
Yet also I have said before (and I maintain) that finding and creating joy IS purpose and IS important and that is the whole thing about Eclectic Purpose.
How do we balance this dichotomy? I am genuinely asking, and I believe it varies person to person.
I don’t have the answers. I do believe there is a time to look away and there is a time to bear witness. I do believe that we are here for a reason and it’s not right to tap out, though I understand why people do.
I still believe we all have to hold our little corner of the world, and that’s truly all we can do, and somehow if we all do this, to the best of our ability, we could find the way. If ENOUGH of us give a shit, and try.
There is so much darkness, yet there is so much light. Somehow it all matters, although I haven’t quite fully found a balance yet. I want to do the right thing, I truly do.
As humans, we all make mistakes, and we all make poor decisions. We all have selfish moments. This does not excuse poor behavior, but it is a fact of life. We can either choose to ignore and continue to do worse, or do better as we know better. We can choose to continue to hate and perpetuate division and separation and hate, or we can choose to forgive, to promote reconciliation. We can choose to try and understand and empathize with another’s perspective, even if we see it as wrong, even if we disagree, even if we are actively fighting against it.
We can not fight hate with more hate, only with love.
I still make so many mistakes. I still turn a blind eye. I understand that if I get too bogged down by the weight of the world, I will be incapacitated. If we tell ourselves we can not look at it, or that we can not handle it, then we fail to show up and do our work. Yet at the same time if we do not set boundaries, and have moments of peace and turning inward, where and when we are privileged enough to do so, we limit ourselves as well.
So there must be both, right? We must do our very best each day, and we must recognize that that looks different and means something different every day. Sometimes that means showing up and bearing witness and recognizing what’s going on for what it is, and giving our time and energy and love and money and resources and votes and support. Sometimes it means enjoying eating a bowl of pasta, accepting that it may or may not be organic, seeing our baby’s smile and reminding ourselves that we are okay. Affirming that we are safe, we belong. Remembering that if we don’t care for ourselves first, we can not help anyone else.
Neither is right, and yet both are. At the end of the day, all we can do is keep showing up, when we know better, do better.
There is a reason our souls have chosen to incarnate here on this planet, at this moment in time. We are here to learn what it means to be human, in all the glory and pain and beauty and suffering.
Same for our sweet, innocent, precious, children. I believe having a baby is A spiritual path, and choosing not to have children is often an equally sacred calling. Both are hard and both are beautiful. Both are selfless and right in their own time. What is meant to be will be if we let it, and there are also so many different realities and levels of existence that there also is no “meant to be”, at least not in the way we usually think of it.
I am completely under qualified to speak on the duality of life yet as a human, we are all qualified, because we are living it. There is a time to be quiet, and a time to speak up.
The only truth I know is to lead with love in the best way I know how, and that love means different things to everyone. “Right” and “fair” mean different things to everyone.
So I will continue to love myself, my cat, my kid, and then everyone else. I will protect my own energy and I will be grateful for my life and know that I deserve peace and safety, and access to all basic needs, even being the flawed, imperfect individual I am, and so does every other human.
I am learning that it is not evil or wrong to have abundance, good experiences, and a good life. I am just beginning to welcome these things I have pushed away for so long. I am learning that living from a place of shame and guilt does not help anyone.
I will accept these things for myself, and I will also choose to not look away. I will know that I am strong enough, I have enough time, I have enough resources to share as well. I will show up. I will bear witness. I will continue to dream of world peace and the end of suffering, and I will do better when I know better.
I will not become so consumed by the weight of the world that I give up all together.
My hope for Eclectic Purpose is to create a ripple, no matter how small. To be a voice. I am not an expert and am not qualified to speak on any of these topics, yet I feel if I am to talk about the easy happy individual scale things, it is also my duty to not stay away completely from these heavier things, the ones that I can not carry alone.
Perhaps it is actually selfish of me to even write about anything this heavy because I am still not doing them justice, I fear I am not doing anything about it except for spreading more fear.
My intention with Eclectic Purpose is to share personal stories, thoughts, feelings and contemplations in efforts to raise awareness and help others feel seen. My intention is to gain a deeper understanding of the human experience.
If Eclectic Purpose reaches a point where it is beneficial to raise others’ voices as well, I will feel beyond privileged to do so.
I do believe we have to start with ourselves. We must start by creating more joy and love in our own lives. We must create a joy-filled, abundant life for ourselves and our children, so we can in turn spill over and care for others. Everyone deserves a joyful life, and this starts with having access to basic needs.
Yes, having children is terrifying. Yet if love them, hold space for them, and raise them in love as much as we can, then there is no room for fear. If we lead with love and guide them to be as much themselves as possible, then we do something different than any generation before. If we let them develop as the perfect, loving, accepting, brilliant little balls of light as they are, and stay as much that as possible, then they will be a generation who can save the world. Not that we need to put all of it on them. It still begins with us. We have to give them somewhere to start, some sort of foundation.
I don’t know how to do this fully, but I believe we begin by leading with love instead of leading with anger and fear. Parenting from a place of love, can be a spiritual path. Deeply challenging, and deeply spiritual. Bio parenting, step parenting, adopting, teaching, however you are raising children, if you are doing so with love and to the best of your ability, you are doing right. If you are called not to have children at all, that is your path of leading with love, that is also deeply spiritual and presents it’s own challenges.
I don’t want to go into a “Shhh, shhh it’s okay.” mode, because this piece started off as just the opposite, but I must share that we can not lose hope, even if we don’t see the way out. We must not lose hope because there are children, animals, plants, and a whole world counting on us, as adults, to lead it. To keep it safe. Those in power right now are not going to do that for us so we must do our part. We can not turn a blind eye, but if we are privileged enough to have a moment of peace and stillness within the chaos, we must honor it by enjoying and valuing it, using it to recharge, then going into the world and creating change when and where we can, in only the way that we can.
For some of us this looks like protesting in the streets, for some of us this means sharing on a public platform, and for some of us this means sitting in meditation in the woods, creating our own peace, doing no harm to ourselves or others (nature included). For all of us, every day, it means showing up and doing the best we can with what we have.
No, we shouldn’t stick our heads in the sand and ignore the suffering, but scrolling through Instagram and being bombarded with the horrors of the world right before we go to sleep or right when we wake up does nothing but perpetuate fear and pain. I hope that this goes without saying but engaging in a hateful way or commenting hateful messages on a post, regardless of what your political views are, does nothing helpful. It does the opposite.
We must choose to welcome ALL our emotions that are evoked, those of anger and those of joy, and then it is up to us to figure out how to harness those very human experiences and turn them into good, in whatever way we can.
For me right now, doing my part means working full time in a social-work related position. It means more God, less religion. More love, less fear. More nature, less screen time.
It means creating Eclectic Purpose and sharing my gifts even if they are less than perfect. It means teaching yoga with the most integrity possible. It means apologizing and forgiving myself and others, while recognizing, accepting, and honoring boundaries that I have placed and that others have placed with me. It means raising a child to the best of my ability. It means leading with love and honesty, even when others don’t agree or don’t see it that way.
What does it look like for you?
I don’t know what life holds. I don’t know what the rest of 2023 holds. I don’t know what my sweet kiddo will experience in his lifetime. The one thing I DO know is that I don’t have all the answers. No one human does. I believe we could though, together.
It is up to all of us to remember that there is no healing without collective healing. There is no peace without us all having peace. There is no end of suffering until suffering is completely eradicated.
There is no light without the dark, and there are lessons in all parts of the human experience, but it is up to us to be light workers. It is up to us to see through the veil, to not fall for the tricks, to be “in the world but not of it”, right? Learned that phrase from church but taking it to a new meaning. To me, religion is being deeply of the world, but spirituality – TRUE spirituality and connectedness is quite the opposite, in my opinion. Spirituality can be found within religion and religion can be a beautiful tool, but for me personally, it is not. I found true connectedness with God when I left religion, but that is for another day.
I will refrain from getting even more into religion and politics. I am debating sharing this, as I often do with any post I suppose, but I will share anyway as I feel it is important, necessary, and something I am still figuring out how to digest and hold within my own life. We can not turn away, but we also should not subject ourselves to the constant bombardment we now have at our fingertips, every moment of the day.
It is a balance, and there is no such thing as true balance. It feels as if it is a constant of too much, and not enough, but yet here we all are, going about our days, doing things that are ever important and not important at all.
I must end this because I am repeating myself. Keep doing your best, and I will too. I know it’s hard, and I love you, even if we don’t agree. We must strive to end suffering, beginning with ourselves,, even when it feels impossible at times.
Your path is only your own, and everyone else’s path is only their own, and we must love and support one another. The way we serve and love and support is also individual. There is no one right answer, so we each must find our own, and being human, we can not do it alone. We must ask for divine guidance. We must strive to unblock our own fears, limiting beliefs, and heal ourselves, then in turn support one another in this process. We must continue to learn better and do better. We must know that there is no one right way for everyone, but stand firm in our own truth.
I actually don’t know how to end this, because I am only human and I can’t see the end, so I will leave you here for now. I hope you know you aren’t alone. It all matters and nothing matters and everything is pointless yet there is a learning and point and synchronicity to everything. My brain hurts now. I would say have a good day but sometimes that isn’t what we need, and nothing is good or bad, so just, keep being. Keep showing up. Keep witnessing. I hope this cultivates more hope than despair!
I titled this post trigger warning but the whole world is a trigger warning, the whole human existence. Life is, in and of itself, triggering. So good luck out there. Until we learn that everything is energy and collectively manifest healing and abundance, we are going to continue this cycle of suffering. So here is to working towards that collective healing, starting from within.