I AM what I AM.
I AM a man of peace and justice.
I AM a man of equality and community.
Trying to live a life of integrity and simplicity.
I AM what I AM.
This is my identity.
How does a man of peace
Live while being swallowed up
By the violence of the machine?
A machine of our own making.
A machine that by its own nature
Must carry on and on and on
Institutionalized within our culture
With us being good little cogs
In the machine.
The machine must work
as it casts out the outcasts
Spewing the broken
and the misfits.
Into the margins go
The poor and downtrodden
The battered and the bruised
The tattered and the torn
The shattered and shocked;
Occupying the margins of society.
A sort of fringe landfill of people
Invisible and voiceless
Because they are useless,
The military industrial complex
Devours goods and services
Making the rich richer
While the powerful send
The young and the strong
To their deaths;
Torn from their mothers’ arms,
Erased from the face of the earth.
The educational industrial complex
Herds the masses through
Factories of rote learning.
Drugging the misfits and
Prodding youth like cattle through
Gates NOT of their own choosing;
Teaching kids to be good little cogs in the machine
As they drop out before they even get started.
The medical industrial complex
Delivers health care through drugs
Treating symptoms rather than causes.
Making big bucks for the
Pharmaceutical industrial complex
And the healthcare industrial complex
Leaving Americans
With the cost of losing both
our money and our health.
The consumer industrial complex
Playing on the weaknesses,
Voids, and addictions of the people
The cogs in the machine.
Seducing them into believing
They have no intrinsic value.
Seducing them into believing
That our “things” define us
That our “things” give us value
That our "things" give us identity;
Although every “thing”
will be left behind
When we die
The automotive industrial complex
An integral part of the
Consumer industrial complex
Has taught us all our lives
That we need to invest
In the worst investment
Of our lives. A car.
But “the car I drive defines me
And my self image,” we are told,
While robbing our children of their planet
Mindlessly, cities and countrysides
Are designed around our dependence
On our automobiles.
Could I survive without it?
Could I survive without the rat race it creates?
Or do I need it so I can participate
in that rat race
Of our own making?
Three years ago
I found myself waking up
While being swallowed up
By the violence of the machine.
Working full time and part time
STRESS was raising havoc
With my health.
My mental health tanked by depression
Due to STRESS
My physical health tanked
By high blood pressure
By high blood sugar
By heart problems
Due to STRESS.
But I had to keep working
Maintaining my rat race
So I could afford my car
For the primary purpose of working so much
So I could afford health insurance
So I could participate in the machine.
Wait a minute!
Destroy my health for the sake of
having health insurance?
So I could fix what I was breaking?
But it was STRESS that was taking me out!
I did not have time to de-stress,
To breathe, to walk, to think, to be.
So I quit my full time job
It paid terrible anyway.
Then my car blew its head gasket
Kind of like what I had been doing to myself.
It truly was a great favor
Because it yanked me out of the rat race
It slowed me down so I could de-stress
Busing, biking, and walking
And low and behold
I’m getting more healthy day by day.
Maybe my car breaking down
saved my life…
Maybe quitting my job
saved my life…
Maybe my American Dream
was killing me…
I discovered that one of the best places
To experience the violence of the machine
Without participating in it
Is sitting at a bus stop
So close to the road
I could feel the wind
In the wake of each car
I could feel the violent pounding
Of wheels on brick.
Participating in the rat race
Does not allow us to observe it.
It is like asking the fish,
“How’s the water?”
And the fish answering,
“What water?”
Participation simply absorbs us into it.
Sitting there observing the rats
In the rat race.
Mindlessly, frantically,
rushing… rushing…. rushing
Rushing around…
For what?
Good question…
For what?
And why is there so much rage?
Rat rage... in the rat cage.
According to a Sufi guide:
“When we rush around,
We lose things.
When we slow down,
Things come to us.”
We bury ourselves
in the bubble
of our sweet machine.
Impervious to others,
to anything outside our bubble
Impervious to the breeze and the sun
And the smell of the rose.
Freeing myself of my machine
Or rather my machine freeing me
From itself gave me life in a whole new way.
I sit, waiting, observing, listening
To the violence of the rat race
Racing down the road to nowhere.
Learning to wait is one of the
first lessons of leaving the rat race,
Letting go of convenience, speed,
And the stress of being a racing rat;
Turning toward health and wellness.
This inherent violence goes on and on…
The entertainment industrial complex
The technological industrial complex
The justice industrial complex
The incarceration industrial complex
The government industrial complex
The manufacturing industrial complex.
These machines of our own making
Destroy and dehumanize
Stripping us of the essence
Of living and being human.
Who am I? (my identity)
Why am I here? (my purpose)
What am I going to do about it? (my mission)
No comments:
Post a Comment