All of It
Created by Tu-2
Grey skies are what the coast will see today, if anything like yesterday. The air has a light touch of fog and the temperature sits at 67 degrees fahrenheit. Today is Tuesday.
Living in southern California has its pluses and minuses. The plus points are the weather, the diversity of landscape (oceans, deserts, mountains, and urban mix), and access to every imaginable cuisine. The people and communities that have grown up in this space are diverse and multi-generational/of mixed lineage. It makes for a fantastic energy in the region. The minuses are in the realm of uncertainties - whether we are talking about the impact of an earthquake, a virus, natural resource depletion, or the capacity of diverse communities to harmonize. The uncertainties are where surprises live. We have all of it, here.
From this place, which is "the middle" of the country (five hours from New York and five hours from Hawai'i), it is possible to understand much of what is happening in the rest of the world. Here, the reality of global relations is more accessible and less frightening because the fact of other people and cultures being and doing, in everyday life. The critique of density and the human tragedies of being unhoused, left without mental health services, random violence – all of it is part of being in today's society no matter where you look in the world. And there is the singular reality of demise - no matter who or where one lives. The labels may differ, but the human condition is the same.
The thing that gives vibrancy to life is not just the moments of joyful celebration, but the ability to encounter the fact of tragedy in life. The one cannot exist without the other. It is not just the individual tragedies, as experienced in illness or the passing of a loved one, but in the collective tragedies that illustrate our collective suffering - as in the numbers of people who are incarcerated for non-violent, non-serious offenses, or the people who are disabled and unhoused, or the ones who really want to contribute and work but cannot because of a lack of opportunity for jobs or a lack of education and experience (which of course, requires ready access to educational opportunities and entry level jobs). It is all very complicated and very inter-twined.
So in order to be fully engaged in life as it presents itself in southern California, one can make the choice to not stay in the space of the familiar. If life has blessed you with the opportunity to make choices, lift up that which might otherwise be missed. If life has brought struggle and hardship, find a way to see beauty in a person, a place, an act of caring that you can initiate if none is to be found in others. Break free from the conventional thoughts and analyses - the consciousness will shift. Seeing life through only one lens can be comforting for a while, but eventually all of it will touch each and every person's life. Might as well practice before it hits – like a firestorm or hurricane.