To the light, to the light

When the dark side rises, it's time to shine bright

It’s been a rough few weeks. I don’t know about you, but I’ve found the gradual unwinding of America’s facade of self-determination and freedom for all, very unsettling.

Realising just how many people remain wilfully and steadfastly solipsistic, fear-based, and ignorant I’ve found very difficult to fully comprehend, let alone accept.

I’ve been squeezed of every drop of credulity left in my mind and body and spirit at what is happening there, in Gaza and here in South Africa, frankly. (And shortly, it would seem, Ukraine.)

It’s difficult to maintain a sense of mental equilibrium when the world’s greatest power, led by cartoon villains, decides that everything from diversity, equality, and inclusion to sustainability, the judicial system, and paper straws are OUT and broligarchs, imperialism, and dissing brown people, women, and the vulnerable is back IN.

Since when did the bad guys start winning?

When did the world get so topsy-turvy? Why does it feel like, globally, there’s a slow slide to the Dark Side, where marching around heil hitlering is kinda commonplace.

It doesn’t bother me when a few rotten apples roll about trying to stink up the place – that’s life, there will always be rotten apples trying to stink up the place.

But when the whole cart starts turning, I start worrying.

It’s at moments like this that I wish The Fulcrum was real. That ‘when the scales seem set towards annihilation, a balancer is born, bringing equilibrium and correcting the course’.

You know, when I started writing The Fulcrum in 2016, Trump hadn’t yet been elected, COVID was still safely stuck in a bat somewhere, Putin was maintaining his boundaries, and bird flu hadn’t yet jumped to mammals.

But now here we are.

And what to do about it?

I’m trying, unsuccessfully, to avoid looking at the news. I’m trying, unsuccessfully, to detach myself from what is playing out around me. I have the privilege of trying to do that.

I don’t live in the US or Gaza or Ukraine. I don’t rely on American aid. I am economically privileged. I live in a country that’s wounded and broken in many ways, but that has the intention to the ‘greater good for all’. We have a world-leading constitution and most people here fundamentally believe in its existence and authority. The racists and haters here are loud, but few.

Still, it’s hard not to be affected when a daily conversation must now include ‘Nazis are bad, mkay’; or when despots can still slaughter thousands upon thousands of people in the name of their egos without consequence.

Or when capitalism goes so bad that the richest of the rich can rely on the support of the poor to keep them in power.

Or when our tech bros and scientists actively work to create a life form so fundamentally anti-human (how could it not be, given who’s creating it) and powerful it puts our very existence in danger.

Or when a world war is possible again because a few insecure, wounded little boys didn’t get enough hugs or boundaries from mommy and daddy when they were growing up.

We could’ve been so great – for ourselves, for each other, for our fellow species – with our little opposing monkey fingers and big brains, and yet we chose, collectively, to opt for the path of learning that needs fear, war, destruction, isolation, inequality, suffering, violence…

It’s very difficult to detach from how stupid this feels.

And that gets frustrating. And heartbreaking. And depressing.

And then it’s difficult to focus on the now. On the present. To look away from my computer and focus on the tangible things I can touch and experience and love in the ‘real world’.

I must try. Otherwise, the maya will consume me. I feel like it already is.

Every morning, I doom scroll the latest headlines – and then continue to do so every 30 minutes until I go to sleep: maybe if I stay connected, maybe if I stay on top of what’s happening, I’ll be able to get ahead of the cloud before the wind changes direction.

It’s like getting sucked very slowly into The Nothing.

From The Neverending Story, The Nothing is the metaphysical representation of the absence of all things that make life worth living: hope, joy, love, imagination…

So I try to continue with my art, staying connected to source, to what really matters for my one little flash of life in this universe.

I try to detach; to pierce the nonsense. The non sense. To see that ‘All this has happened before and it will all happen again’, so why waste my one precious life on worrying about something I have no control over.

I have to keep reminding myself of this. Over and over. Like a mantra.

I think that’s why I wrote The Fulcrum, because some part of me, I guess, felt like the worst was still to come for our generation. Maybe I hoped it wouldn’t be as bad as it was starting to feel: the end of the world as we know it. Maybe I wrote it as a sort of wish fulfilment.

Or, at least, wish fulfilment based on how I see the world.

You see, The Fulcrum is based on philosophies and viewpoints I’ve chosen to believe: We are one. We are the god force. Life is the god force. All of it, all the ugly, all the pretty. All the good, all the evil. They are not separate things.

We are nature, and nature – life, the god force – is in balance. Both in creation and creative destruction. Birth, death, birth, death in endless cycle – all of it is in service to life.

So, when the anti-life arises, when destruction is for its own sake, when death does not generate life, well, something’s gotta give.

In The Fulcrum it’s the balancer and the group of mortals and immortals charged with shepherding them into existence who will change the course of humanity and place it back on track for survival and in service to life.

And in The Fulcrum, even though some balancers don’t always appear to be doing good on the surface, some action they take, some decision they make, is ultimately in service to life and the greater good of all.

After all, we came by our creation and understanding of human rights via WWII, didn’t we?

So maybe, without meaning to and utterly against their ego-based and self-serving intentions, Netanyahu or Putin or Trump or Musk or the Ai war-machine guys are pulling levers for some future greater good. Maybe some nameless person in their entourage will affect the world as we collectively experience it for something better.

I mean we can’t know how this will turn out. Maybe it’s all, surprisingly, weirdly, for the best.

As I said, wish fulfilment.

But, you know, there’s something else in The Fulcrum that I can’t leave off here, simply because it would be remiss to leave all the world-building in the hands of a few selfish people.

We are all nature; we are all creators. We are all capable of making great changes to the world around us. Even if that world doesn’t extend further – in your mind – than your family or your friends, your pets, your colleagues, the plants you tend, the environment you keep around you.

Because love and relationships are the only things that really matter in this one small flash of life, in the here and now.

So, focus on the here, focus on the now. Focus on the work. Focus on love.

At least, that’s what I will keep telling myself, like a mantra, over the next few days and weeks and months and years.

Anyway.

Writing this has made me feel a bit better; has helped to redirect my attention to what matters.

That’s what I love about writing. As I write it changes something in me. I can pull myself back from The Nothing and remember that there is always something worth rooting for.

Til next time.

Love and light,
t

Photo by Sora Sagano on Unsplash

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