Let's Do The Time Warp Again

The only reason I'm here is you. I love you too much. You are me. I am you. We are each other. You've heard me say it once, twice, three times and lately...well, I love you.

I cannot live without you. I would hope to hear you say the same thing but I'm not conceited enough to believe such a hope. Instead, I act upon the belief.

I will shout it one more time. I LOVE YOU.

So quit acting like children and behave like reasonable members of our species who love one another. I'm not asking for a yippie hippie love fest. I'm talking about practical, everyday, repetitious sweat, toil, joy and giving without expectation of receipt in kind.

From the recent Pittsburgh slugfest and UN speech contest I've had enough words to want to wash my own mouth out with soap even though I didn't say anything bad or socially unacceptable.

I'm just a regular guy, with regular fears and doubts. I know this planet is big enough for billions of us. Big and small at the same time, just like all our fears and doubts.

I'm angry right now. I'm tired of playing games with certain ones of you who think there's a hidden agenda out there with people out to get you. Let me tell you a secret that you already know - if you believe in ghosts, you'll see ghosts. Quit seeing ghosts!

I wanted to write a satirical skit for the next blog entry. Over the past two days I watched our body gestures and heard our tones of voice to better understand how the world of our species is doing, listening to the undertone of normality that keeps us linked together. I skipped two days of writing to talk with people (but didn't skip the habit of recording their names and workplaces for later recognition here).

I had already picked up some information early last week that told me our leaders, some elected freely, some elected in questionable circumstances and some self-appointed, were going to publicly disagree with one another to serve their self-interests (self-interests both at the individual level and the country level).

Pardon my bluntness but fuck your self-interests. I will not tolerate that crap. You have no self-interests anymore. This is my planet as well as yours. Your personal problems are mine, too. If you have a problem in your country, then it's a problem with me and my associates. We have no more patience for your self-pity and whining!

I have no desire to topple governments because the resultant chaos is beyond my control. But I do have associates who are no longer standing by, who want to move this body electric into the next phase of our species, beyond the petty "my belt is bigger than your belt" locker room bragging.

You want to show patriotism? You want to have pride? Then put aside your differences for a moment and listen.

There are seven billion of us listening and watching each other. We have mouths to feed. We have jobs to fill. We have jobs to create. We have family to care for. We may think we have no one who cares for us. We are skin and fingernails and muscles and bones and blood and brain. Every single one of us. We may have unique characteristics. We may or may not have living relatives but we're alive. You are within less than a planet's distance from the other seven billion of you.

I did not want to come here tonight but I love you too much to let you keep arguing with each other. I will not accept blind patriotism or grandstanding.

Wherever you are - sitting, standing, walking, chewing, typing - tell someone nearby that you love that person. Use your comfortable means of saying it. For instance, if you're sitting at a restaurant, make eye contact with the server and sincerely thank the server for being there to serve your food. If you are alone, tell yourself you love yourself. If you feel uncomfortable expressing your love for the person near you, let yourself be uncomfortable. You may be ready to face an opponent on a sports field or the field of battle but tell the person facing you you love that person, anyway.

Love in this sense is not about liking the other person or accepting the other person's lifestyle. Love is saying we're the same species, sharing the same planet.

I do not like what some of my leaders say, or what leaders of other groups or countries say and do, but I am loving them because they are me. I want us to live. I want you to live. A simple kind of love.

Your life is not mine. You don't have to like me. You don't have to agree with me. You don't have to belief you love me. I don't care. I don't live your life. You don't live mine. But we are still the same species. Let's think together for a moment.

The amount of arable land on this planet is limited. The amount of fresh water on this planet is limited. We have to share this land and water together, not tomorrow or the day after tomorrow but today.

So quit with the hot air and empty promises. Stop calling each other names. Feel free to compete in the realm of trade (or the world of ideas, if you will) because we all need newness to feel alive.

No more saber rattling. No more barriers. No more "I know someone's out to do me wrong." Admit the truth. We have this one planet to share between us.

I know some of you want the world for yourselves. I know some of you want the biggest, the fastest, the greatest, the most unique [name your favorite hobby/pastime/desire]. These feelings will drive you to extreme behaviour in your quest to conquer these feelings. No matter what, we still live on this planet together right now.

Thus, let's see the world as one big rock we're standing or sitting on, not little islands or fiefdoms. The breath I take today may well be on the other side of this planet before you know it. The water I drink will exit my bladder, evaporate and rain somewhere else next week. Thus, you're breathing and pissing on me right now. That's the way it's always been and the way's it's going to be.

I love you. I wanted to spend two months away from this blog but dissatisfied with the semantics of the international leaders the past few days, with messages of malcontent, I decided I love you and if my leaders and your leaders are going to waste my breath with negative words, I wanted to break my silence and tell you I love you because I don't think we have time to waste on listening to misguided leaders.

You are more important to me than anyone else I know. My planet is your planet. I have no strength in myself. My strength is in you. I depend on you every second of every living day. I'm tired of hate-filled language and action. I can't lift all of you on my shoulders but we can lift each other up, one set of arms at a time. I just told my wife, the person nearest me, that I love her. Before that, I told her mother that I love her and before that I told my parents that I love them. I told people this weekend that I love them even though I didn't know them - I told them with my eyes and my actions in the best way I knew how in the moment. I felt vulnerable and out of sorts at times but I reached out of my comfort zone to tell them. I put aside social structures and stereotypes to talk to people around me.

I don't care about nuclear disarmament treaties, border wars or illegal substance distribution routes. I care about you. The only way we're going to overcome our destructive habits is to rise above ourselves and see us as one species. It's not going be easy. It isn't easy. We do it one moment at a time. Like this one, the moment when I wanted to concentrate on some used books I purchased and not think about computers or new technology for a few days, but comments from people I heard this weekend bothered me and piqued my curiosity to see why they were throwing out such strange ideas. A quick lookup on the Internet told me why - they were responding to the condensed soundbites of leaders' speeches.

Now you know why I dislike advert-driven news sources. In previous decades, that was the only large-scale, cost-effective means of getting information to the masses. Now, with tailored news and divided masses, people are getting news that fits their preconceived views, driven by narrower and narrower advertising revenue streams. News providers are screaming louder and building up false enemies at an alarming rate, all for bigger audiences and bigger paychecks. They cater hate like candy, oblivious to or unconcerned about the species at large.

I break my silence to call on others to help pull down the barriers these hucksters put up. Let's reach out and shake hands. Pick up a shovel and build a new community together. Share the planet, giving each other the space to be ourselves and celebrate our cultural and subcultural strengths. Accept positive reinforcement. If you must find an enemy, look for negative comments - fight to overcome negativity, don't kill people because of what you've been told about them. If people are happy in their cultural comfort zone and treating others outside their culture with care at the species level, let them be. If they're mistreating others, then get the word out so we can examine their lifestyles and find creative ways to work together with them for improving all our lives. If they insist on destructive lifestyles, such as killing each other or those not like them on a continuous basis, then that's where setting aside places for them and others like them makes sense - let them have a contained area for our species' self-destructive tendencies - after all, we need outlets for our fight-or-flight syndrome to be felt and worked out.

Love is being ourselves and recognizing ourselves for who we are. We can overcome diversity and still be ourselves without appealing to just one animal instinct all the time. Let's focus our strengths (fighting and caring) on preserving the species and focus our fears on the areas of fun, laughter, satire, and games.

I have dropped my thoughts on this blog here tonight because I am fighting mad, ignoring all the jokes in my head for the moment. I will find a way to ask us to preserve our species with every last word and breath I have, using every thought and emotion to get the point across that we're the same. I love you and will let you know that as often as I can. That's all I've done and all I'll ever do, using mainly satire to say I love you but I'll use anger, too, if that's what it takes. I may laugh at the world but it's the only world we've got to laugh at right now.