WARMHEARTED HOLISMS – WE ARE THE SUM OF OUR HEARTS/PARTS
Friday, December 25, 2020
Dear Musings readers,
At first, I envisaged a pithy, poignant piece for today.
Involuntarily, you’ll see below, short and sweet did not manifest.
At first blush, you might think it’s more run-on than a rundown. Please endure – I had more to say, or rather, it took more words to say it all, so please read on a few minutes longer than usual …
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Merry Christmas, everybody – peace on earth, goodwill, and good work!
Keep up everything you are doing to make a difference.
Just please, do a little more next year. Summon your inner Santa, and give more to the world than you take, so every Virginia will want to believe in you.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.
Not a man or woman, not a place, not any single doing. But instead, a widespread right-mindedness we see more than one day a year, more than one week a year; there is light and life everywhere if we are open to seeing it realistically and holistically (holisms).
Throughout history, during and between pandemics, the progress of mankind and the furtherance of our human condition has improved unrelentingly. In the give and take of life, Virginia, we live in extraordinary times of profound difficulty and unprecedented opportunity.
As contagious and frightening as circumstance might appear to you currently, our health and prosperity everywhere are – even in our darkest moments and gloomiest places – better than ever throughout history. There is excess at the top and squalor at the bottom in every country, but the lowest and poorest among us are doing better than ever. There is conflict, war, tension, and foul rhetoric worldwide – that’s scary, dangerous, and divisive. Still, we are safer and less conflicted than ever. And more humanitarian than ever.
My point, Virginia, is not to imply we should be grateful and calm when so many people are dead, dying, or fearful of an insidious, invisible virus. I don’t mean to suggest we should take this happily or expect it can be rationalized as good for us …
But it IS good for us, is it not?
Consider …
Aren’t we more appreciative of kindness, more understanding of loneliness and isolation, more careful in keeping ourselves and our workplaces safe and sanitary, more trusting of medical science and doctors’ advice, and more compassionate toward our fellow citizens?
I believe we are.
This time in history, this calamity, is being capitalized upon by many clever people – some businesses are skyrocketing-ly successful. New business models are being developed for good reasons, and sadly many are rendered obsolete. How we shop, work, socialize, and engage in leisure has been transformed more dramatically in a single year than we might typically expect in a decade or longer.
We’ve been shaken, stirred, Zoomed, and turned upside down. How we connect and interact with each other is both uncomfortable and remarkable – we’re more separated at the same time that we’ve bridged enormous distances to communicate with people we’ve never met; we’ve virtually traveled, conferenced, and met with people all over the planet in real-time without anyone having to travel. Who knew?
Change has been rapid, smart, and unsettling – mistakes made, corrections made, we’re learning new medical vocabulary while public sentiment shifts, shimmies, and is convulsed. Every day scientists and doctors learn more, every day, more lives are saved, and near every day, headlines bring shock and awe …
And we’re still here.
Stunned, dazed, and confused, yet truthfully Virginia, we are better off than ever.
The poorest people in the world’s remotest parts are better off too, though they have much further to go, and they need our collective help more than ever. That gap between rich and poor gets wider every year – that’s something we need to work hard on, not by bringing down successful folks at the top, but by raising the floor for everyone at the bottom.
That disparity is our topmost societal emergency. It’s more important than presidents, Brexit-fixes, trade deals, climate change, and sea debris – not to diminish any of those concerns, but the human situation disparity trumps them all.
Because …
When we lift people, we lift families.
When we lift families, we lift communities.
When we lift communities, we can lift nations.
That’s heavy-lifting, to be sure, but essential lifting that benefits everyone.
We all CAN make a difference in helping our fellow citizens of this planet. As we always have, we can make progress, but we need to do that with a greater sense of urgency than ever.
Children cannot wait.
Another generation cannot wait.
Sick, poor, and uneducated people cannot wait.
Each of us needs to do something to make a difference for someone else.
Of course, we all can, but we each need to find our own way to make that difference.
For some people, that’s giving money to worthy causes; for others, that might be giving voice to the voiceless, help to the helpless, and a lift to those clinging to the bottom rung …
Not in anyone, or anything, but within everyone.
Holism - a theory that the universe and especially living nature is correctly seen in terms of interacting wholes (as of living organisms) that are more than the mere sum of elementary particles
Reader feedback:
Merry Christmas Mark. Your 24th December musing captured my sentiments of the year and this day perfectly. Well said. I cannot imagine what it would have been like in the Great War dealing with the Spanish flu while hunkered down in trench warfare in the rain and snow, the mud, avoiding gunfire, mustard gas, bombs and death. We have, as you have many times pointed out much to be grateful for. There are those less fortunate than ourselves and these are trying times, difficult for many; but there is hope. Wishing you all the best of the season and continued inspiration for your musings. Your friend RT, White Rock, BC
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