Perhaps what drives me the most crazy in the current culture is the erosion of any overarching alignment, any sense of common good. We need more call to shared purpose.

The absence of a sense of purpose leads to paying a kind of exquisite attention to one’s own SELF. Fostering the ludicrous notion that one’s feelings constitute a moral mandate. “This hurt me (made me uncomfortable…) therefore it must be wrong”.

In the absence of purpose, or common cause, we move into a horrible house of mirrors. Just distorted reflections of ourselves everywhere we look.

Dealing with people coming from that whining and shrieking place – everything that happens distilled into their individual experience of it – is utterly wearying. I wear myself out when I slip up and into that.

After disasters, we can see how glad people are to be rid of this self-centeredness as they fling themselves into the arena to help, to declare themselves part of a collective / community. To wrap themselves in an identity that makes them A PART. Instead of the lonely “apart”.

It’s worth noting that for years now, after every disaster, we have to tell people to stop coming to help. That outpouring of help reflects our hunger to belong. To have a shared pure purpose.

When the unthinkable happens, we set aside individual identities and labels and wade into the muck and mud and belong.

It saddens me to think that many people may live their whole lives without knowing what it’s like to be a part of a shared purpose. To work, pull, join together in a selfless enterprise so that for a moment we are relieved of the burden of self and isolation of separation. And plunged into the security of community.

We have that option every moment of every day. To wade into the muck and mud and act as if we are a part of the wholeness of humanity. To give without any thought of return. To use our resources, talents and skills to ease suffering and build something new.

Wrote this for me and maybe for you too.

     Love,

     Angela