The World As It Is

Somebody once replied to a big change in my life I was ascribing to X, that no, if it wasn't X it would have been Y. Or A, B, C, and so on and so forth and more of the same.

And it's so true. I didn't make the change because X, I made it because me.

It took me a while to get here but here I am.

It's been a few months, let me tell you, but when a woman I'd been talking to recently asked, "But are you healing?" my mouth answered, "Yes".

It wasn't really a question but later I thought about it and realized she was right. I am healing. That's the point, not the hurt, the healing.

It's the job of life, isn't it, healing. Healing and letting go. Or maybe it's the letting go that brings the healing. I don't mean letting go of people, even our dearly and not so dearly departed, I mean letting go the stories of who we were then and who we'll be later.

My daily gratitude practice helps me stay focused on what's real, as opposed to made up, so right now.

I had a friend who decided not to care anymore about the world as it is. My mother was the same. Once, in her very old age, she looked at me, that steely look still in her eyes, even though they couldn't see anymore, and said, "I don't understand you". It was a confession, a laying down of a mother's burden, and a relief to us both.

I wish I could say that's when I learned to stop explaining myself but of course it wasn't. I was doing it with the woman I'd been talking to recently. It's why she asked if I was healing.

Ah, breakthrough. No more explanations. I understand me and that's enough.

Thank you, universe, for this addition to my daily gratitude practice.

Anyway, I've been watching a variety of therapy videos over the past few years and I've noticed a couple of therapists, and this is just recently, no longer shy away from the world as it is for fear of offending someone.

Anyone.

It's always bothered me, the careful avoidance of how it is in the world by therapists, as if it has nothing to do with our grief, fear, anxiety.

Substance use disorders.

Every time a friend gets sober I grow wings.

One therapist is even pointing out now of other therapists that they're not doing their job if they're ignoring how it is in the world, because it's WHY so many of us have trouble healing. It's not crazy to care, it's crazy-making to be told we'd heal faster if only we didn't, as if the world as it is has nothing to do with us, with anybody, it's just... how it is.

There's a scene in The Sound of Music, I've never forgotten, where Max wants Maria to tell Captain Von Trapp to try and get along (with the Nazis), and she says, "I can't ask him to be less than he is".

We're not being asked, we're being told.

I can name at least three people of my close acquaintance who died prematurely, recently, due to decisions made by successive governments in Ontario to reduce the quality of healthcare available to us, even though we're collectively wealthier than at any time in our history.

Meanwhile it's tax breaks and means testing because we really only take the world as it is when it suits us.

Doug Ford's a demonstrable crook, an ignorant bully, and he's Premier of Ontario because people don't care enough.

The last thing we need is people caring less.

My mother used to say I was upsetting myself. My friend used to put it similarly of others, they did it to themselves. It took me a minute to realize she meant me, too, because what am I to her if not an other.

There's that old line, I say you're driving me crazy, you say it's a short drive.

So here's what I think, and yes, I'm aware of the daily threats of takeover by our fascist neighbours - who were never not fascist in one way or another so let's not kid ourselves all over again - we DON'T have to take the world as it is. We're just being told we do by our latest Prime Minister, who views himself, and so the country he was elected to lead, as somehow apart from, or maybe even above, it, the world. But we're not above it, and we are a part of it, and, as such, we're responsible for why the world as it is.

OUR world.

We change our behaviour, we change our world.

It's funny. I didn't see it until I did, and it was a personal experience with our much ballyhooed dental care program that opened my eyes, but if we didn't already have universal healthcare in Canada (and I use the word universal loosely) our government today would be telling us we must take the world as it is, and no, we can't have universal healthcare, it's too expensive.

There is no way in hell a government of Canada would bring in universal healthcare now and we need to be asking ourselves why that is, not shrugging our shoulders and saying, oh well, it is what it is.

I don't think I've ever written my Member of Parliament before but I decided now is the time. I can deal with it, too, so I'll take it to the wall. It's not really about dental care anymore for me, although I'll be out not a bit of money. Fortunately, I realized a while back, I have enough.

As Peter Gzowski once said of the healthcare he received after a heart attack, "It's nice to not have to worry about money". But of course he had the resources to afford the recovery. It's not the same for a retail clerk heading up a family and renting an apartment.

I just mean we're not as good as we could be and never have been. A lot of what we believe about ourselves is, well, kind of made up.

All the concern by our government right now about this industry or that, cars, oil, canola, while Canadians are dying on gurneys in hospital hallways, or living on the streets playing Russian roulette with addictive pain killers, or just finding ourselves unable to go a day without crying because taking the world as it is hurts our hearts too much to bear.

Because we're a middle power I guess is what we're supposed to buy now.

Don't get me wrong. I voted Liberal. Because whether Canadians are ready to face it down or not the choice is Liberal or the Neo-Nazi Separatist Bitcoin Anti-Vax Freedom Convoy Plus Michael Chong Party.

I mean, can we not be real, ever? Stephen Harper's been Chair of the IDU for a decade now, an international laundromat for the dark money funding the rise of fascism all over the world, including Canada and next door where the regime he helped elect is executing democracy activists in the street.

He was a Prime Minister of Canada ffs.

So no, I don't accept taking the world as it is, not when no one who can is calling out the fascism we can do something about right here at home.

We have an entire media chain that's been nothing more than fascist propaganda for years, kept alive by government funded bailouts as if it's good for democracy. It's even free online, and has been for years, while decent media is paywalled. And we wonder why so many people have been radicalized into believing fascism is freedom.

Postmedia alright. Postdemocracy too.

No, I don't agree with Mark Carney we have to take the world as it is. It's a choice. It's always been a choice. LAVs for Saudi Arabia because $$$ for Canadians. And it wouldn't be so bad if it was a choice that isn't also taking us ever further from the promise of a society that measures itself by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. But it is. What has changed since the pandemic that resulted in reservists ending up with PTSD from the conditions they encountered in nursing homes?

I always think of something a friend entirely dependent on social assistance, so poor, said back when we were in one of our financial crises, "It's times like this when I can take a bit of a breather from worrying about not having any money in the bank."

Anyway, it's no one government's fault, and certainly not Mark Carney's, but I'm not going along to get along anymore either. We don't HAVE to take the world as it is, we CHOOSE to, as we've been choosing to do for decades, and to no one's benefit.

You can't care too much and don't let anybody tell you otherwise.❤