The forest

Even the early mornings this last week in the Gatineau Hills were hot and languid and heavy. For those who had to work outside it must have felt like a slavish oppression by Mother Nature who, adding insult to injury, sent in the mosquitoes to feast. Most of us not dipping into the river or riding in cars top down were huddled in our air conditioned houses if we had air conditioning. Those without simply stayed stupefied in front of fans or lying drowsily in hammocks under a forest of trees. We watched the world on our TVs and computers as it struggles waiting for the heat wave to end. The world itself seems as if it is burning and roiling in the heat of politics and rebellion and chaos.

But we are here and the world is out there. We watch our gardens grow lush with the thunderous rain and feed the miracle of birds that drift from the somnolent sky. Some, now back to work, escaped to the offices and stores in our small town but mostly to the city across the bridge. Above the colourful masks, eyes peer and furrowed brows catch at the heart. The worry is palpable. The struggle for some is painful. We don’t know what the new normal is supposed to be and we are, if nothing else, logical about things. Rational. Ready to do what needs to be done but unsure of what that is now. In this world. In this crazy world. So in our lives we simply do what needs to be done that day. For that day is all we are guaranteed and pretty much all we’re prepared to cope with. And that is okay. For now. We do that day sometimes determined, sometimes on edge, sometimes with flaring tempers or dull dark with anxiety and worry. We are human. We aren’t normally like this. Not normally. But then, nothing really is normal now.

How are we too reckon with all this? This worldwide epic change swirling, churning, billowing around us, insistent on itself even as we fight for perspective. All we can do is live inside our quiet place, our familiar place. We watch over our family, our neighbours, our communities. We wait. Sometimes we make a stand but mostly we wait.

I’ve written before about all this madness in the world. It seems like chaos but it is simply a reckoning. As if the world was striving towards an unseen goodness in a sea of angry opinion. All these “isms.” It makes us creep about in conversation fearful of mishap, worried about taking any stand, going hopefully with the flow, most too tired now to care. Most of us want to be left alone to think what we think. It seems like an individual is lost in this, and well they are—hostage to monumental forces. But that is okay. As I’ve said before, I believe all of these “isms”, environmentalism, feminism, veganism, anti-racism form a prism--a stunning piece of glass reflecting all those colours of the human spirit. It is magnificent. It is hope. But we must guard with our very lives the good here. And what then is the good?

I know only what good isn’t. Good is not hatred of the other. Good is not contempt for the other. Good is not judgment. Good is not ignorance. Good is not these things. And that is where this epic, this Homeric Time demands a reckoning—our only task as individuals in this sea of change. They call it, for wont of a better word, a soul-searching time. It is for many a great “undoing” of everything that they believed in. When jobs are lost, when people we love die, when the sand beneath our feet slips away we can only hold on to what matters. We can only gauge ourselves by our searching. So by what do we gauge ourselves? 

Do we gauge ourselves based on how we were educated? How we were raised? What our peers believe? What our favourite political party tells us? What our job demands? There comes, to us all, a time when we are alone with ourselves to fight our way to what matters. What truly matters. And that is not hatred. It is not okay for a white person to hate a black person because they are black. It is not okay for a woman to hate a man because they are men. It is not okay for a man to hate a woman, a vegan to hate a carnivore, a communist hate a capitalist, a liberal hate a conservative, a child to hate an adult… No. It is not okay. Any institution, philosophy, political party or community built on these things is not okay. 

These “isms” are just trees in a forest and we need to see that forest. A forest is made of mighty trees stretching high to the sky—many limbs arching to the sky. A forest seeks only to live in community, harmless, quiet, in sunlight and shadow. By what do we gauge ourselves with? Certainly not a forest fire of hatred. Certainly not an opinion of others that rolls eyes and points fingers. If you were taught this. If you were educated to this—unlearn it.

Why do you need to unlearn it? Because you are left defenceless against what may be a fight for us all. We want goodness, not hatred. We cannot fight what we have become. And that battle may come. You cannot fight what is bad in this world directly: you must increase the Good.

We gauge ourselves by kindness. One to another despite all differences. That is all.