Self

I have to warn you, before you read this.  I just read a book, “A Child Called It”, and I’m really disturbed by it.  So the following is probably going to be deep, but dark.  Depressing, even.  I don’t do posts like this, normally.  But this is “one of those times”.  Read at your own discretion.  And if you have some problem with cussing, I doubly recommend you to not read it.  Cause then not only will you be depressed, but you will be angry with me that I used a cuss word.  One final warning is that when I get like this, I get really caught up in the moment and probably get too extreme.  Oh well.

We live in a bubble, all of us.  A bubble of comfort that is lavished upon us abundantly, overwhelming us with myriads of toys and tricks and games and gimmicks that have one singular purpose: keep us focused on self.  Self, that singular word, that individual entity that dominates our existence.  Self, the motivating force by which we justify all that we do in life whether consciously or subconsciously.  We need to look after self.  To take care of self.  To promote, to help, to grow, to nourish, to support, to feed our self.  All the while, we become blinded, a chosen ignorance that embraces the blessings with smiles and laughter and joy, and shuns the discomforts with disgust and a sigh of sympathy.  Our form of recompense is tied up in money and gifts, and rarely, oh so rarely, paid through a giving of self.  There are few who give self away.  But those legends are so far and in between.  6 Billion people, a few is not enough.

A man drives by the largest concentration of homeless people in America…

…his method of salvation is slipping a half eaten sandwich outside the window of his expensive Mercedes Benz to one of the passerbys.  Good thing none of the mayonaise from the sandwich dropped on his car.  That might have been pretty expensive, more than self had planned to commit to help the helpless self!

How about this.  A woman is beaten, raped, murdered in an alley late at night.  Many selves are watching, hearing, fearing.  If they call, what will happen to me?  What if he comes and kills me?  Someone else, some selfless self will definitely be the one to make the call.  This is a matter that this self cannot be tied up in; I have too much of myself to worry about!  So no one calls.  Everyone thinks the other will, and in the end, the girl dies.  Two hours in the alley, slowly bleeding, blood dripping, dying.  She’s crying.  But the selves have turned away.  They’re right.  The self is probably too important to risk a little. 

Movies stir us.  Tears of pity often leave us, make us wonder, make us shudder.  Such a harsh world: God bless America!  Whole countries are dying, but God bless America!  War’s are lurking, children soldiers.  Nine years old here, loved in school.  Nine years old there, loved in whore houses.  Little ones make more than olds: better for the economy of the trade.  Innocense lost, left beaten and dead.  Justice’s iron fist is just a dream, an evanescent image…fading…

They hope.  They pray. 

Silence.

One last story to read, and sigh, and then forget.  Five years old, trapped in her home.  Basement prison, raped and beaten.  Bearing her father’s children.  So damned dark, it haunts her still.  Her source of saftey, security, ruined.  Her protector nothing but a demented pervert.  Just imagine…

Meanwhile, all of us continue to be tied up in our obligations, to our self.  Our 2.5 kids.  Our picture perfect life, with a white picket fence, flowers and baseball at the park.  “Nothing wrong with feeding self,” the self says, and smiles with jubilant satisfaction at appeasing the guilt of self with every form of justification known to man.  “What can one person do,” the self victoriously boasts.  An admirable argument, indeed.  Then we proceed to use the guise of prayer, to compensate for self.  “God will take care of it,” we assuredly say.  I agree.  But what part will you play?

Even now, it’s a sad reality.  As I’m writing, these words are filled with hypocrisy.  This is as much to you as it is to me.  Isn’t that sad?  That even those who have such thoughts, are nothing but phonies, feeling pretty damned sorry, but often so lazy, so worried, so damned fucking tied up in self? 

I’m sick and tired of self.

Aren’t you?