Blind, but Starting to See…

I remember back when I was a freshman in high school, some 14 years ago now, talking to a guy friend telling him that I wished everyone were blind. I wished that we were forced to only look into each others hearts to make decisions on who we chose around us. That we would choose only the highest quality people for who they were on the inside not how they appeared to be on the outside.

 

My first music festival in 2005, Vegoose, was a turning point in my life. I went originally to see Jack Johnson whom I had been listening for a few years, but had no idea what to expect. It was a brilliant mix of artists, some who I had heard of before, but most that I had not. I liked the beat and the feel of the festival and that scene so much that I really started to get into it. I didn’t really know what it all meant, but I was loving it.

 

Sometime in 2006 I remember a friend posing a question to me… If I had the choice to be blind or deaf, which would I choose? I immediately said that I would choose to be blind, thinking back of my youthful wish. I was still so much into music and moving my body to the beat that I couldn’t imagine not being able to experience it. Along with that, if I were blind then I would be forced to solely rely on my intuition to lead me in the right direction.

 

Then came a huge physical turn in my life… I moved to Brazil. I heard people all the time singing along to songs and not knowing the words and I realized that I also, didn’t really know either. I began on a personal mission to look up lyrics of my favorite songs. This has been so revealing. I didn’t know the lyrics and I certainly didn’t know the meaning of the words that my favorite artists sang. This lead me to start looking up the artists themselves. It inspired me to learn about history so that I could understand the climate of the world and the US at the time the artist grew up and when they wrote the lyrics. I wanted to know why they chose the words that they chose to sing about. I wanted to know why they chose to sing about those topics. I didn’t understand, but I really wanted to so I just started to try. I was blind in another way, for so long.

 

I still don’t know if I really see, but I am beginning to and that makes me feel good. I can only try to do my best in any given circumstance while striving for truth and honesty in every situation.

Good People

All night I thought about the good hearted people in my life that have helped to shape who I am today. They have helped me to see my world as my world, with endless possibilities. As long as every endeavor is started with honesty, love and kindness then it will work out the way that it is supposed to. It is supposed to work out well, really well. That is what happens when you do approach your life and your decisions with a stong passionate heart, patience and an inquisitive mind.

In a way, when I stepped out of that world that I had surrounded myself in and enveloped myself in a completely different world, I wasn’t ready. I thought that everyone was essentially good with good intentions. That hasn’t always been the case while I have been living abroad. It was a hard lesson for me to learn, but on the same note, I know understand those good hearted people that I have come in contact with along my path of life on a completely different level now. I am so grateful that my eyes have opened to this. I am so grateful that I have been so blessed in life to have had the experiences that I have had. My adventures will only get better from here now that my eyes that can see a bit better from my heart than they did before.

Blessed

Lately in life I have been feeling extremely blessed. I have had such a great life. I have been on a big life adventure in some of the most mystical and special places. Along the way I have come in contact with the most incredible, honest, good-hearted people that have helped to shape my world today. I am so fortunate that my journey has lead me to who I am at 28 years aged. Although I have danced in the rain, literally and figuratively countless times, It hasn’t always been so carefree. It hasn’t always been while standing on a mountain top, in fact I have seen a few deserts, I have trusted people who didn’t understand what that meant. I didn’t know really what that meant either, I hope I do now.

There is this thing, some idea that got into my head when I was young, that I would not make it past my 27th birthday… I think I knew secretly that I would die or something bizarre would happen. Well, I didn’t die, and I am thankful, however, from about that point to where I am today has been the most revealing and inwardly-focused time of my life. Its a little overwhelming to think of at times, but I have been tested to see where I stand on my morals and how much I really practice my values.

I want to share what I have learned about life so far with everyone in my world. I want to keep it going and develop this into something bigger, something more powerful and good. To help spread the positive loving energy to others so that we can really change our world to be how we want it to be, we just have to do it. I will continue on this endless search for the truth and hope that I have gained enough knowledge to understand it. My blessed journey continues.

White Privilege

This is fantastic article outlining mainstream present moment examples that we are experiencing as a nation in regards to White Privilege. There is white priveledge in the US and around the world for that matter. It is unmistakably true about the US as it is for Brazil, my current vantage point. It is disgusting and unfortunately most people still don’t see it. We are taught in the US to not see the racism and built in biasness that runs so deep in the United States. Like a lot of things, it is hard to see something that is right in front of our eyes every day, especially if we have always been taught to look at other things. We, as Americans, try to hide it, try to make up for it in some sectors, but if you actually research the issues you will see that minorities and women generally come out on bottom… while white men, continue to be on top… We live in a White World and as my white friends will probably dispute this, it is absolutely true.

I got this article from a friends site www.myspace.com/portuguese_poetress – Thank you Amy.

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Here is the article:
White Privilege

This is Your Nation on White Privilege
By Tim Wise
9/13/08

For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you’ll “kick their fuckin’ ass,” and talk about how you like to “shoot
shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you’re “untested.”

White privilege is being able to say that you support the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance because “if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it’s good enough for me,” and not be immediately disqualified from holding office–since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the “under God” part wasn’t added until the 1950s–while if you’re black and believe in reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school, requires it), you are a dangerous and mushy liberal who isn’t fit to safeguard American institutions.

White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.

White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto is “Alaska first,” and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you’re black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she’s being disrespectful.

White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do–like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child
labor–and people think you’re being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college and the fact that she lives close to Russia–you’re somehow being mean, or even sexist.

White privilege is being able to convince white women who don’t even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because suddenly your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a “second look.”

White privilege is being able to fire people who didn’t support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely
knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.

White privilege is when you can take nearly twenty-four hours to get to a hospital after beginning to leak amniotic fluid, and still be viewed as a great mom whose commitment to her children is unquestionable, and whose “next door neighbor” qualities make her ready to be VP, while if you’re a black candidate for president and you let your children be interviewed for a few seconds on TV, you’re irresponsibly exploiting them.

White privilege is being able to give a 36 minute speech in which you talk about lipstick and make fun of your opponent, while laying out no substantive policy positions on any issue at all, and still manage to be
considered a legitimate candidate, while a black person who gives an hour speech the week before, in which he lays out specific policy proposals on several issues, is still criticized for being too vague about what he would do if elected.

White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian
nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God’s punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and
everyone can still think you’re just a good church-going Christian, but if you’re black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you’re an extremist who probably hates America.

White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Dotrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a “trick question,” while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O’Reilly means you’re dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.

White privilege is being able to go to a prestigious prep school, then to Yale and then Harvard Business school, and yet, still be seen as just an average guy (George W.Bush) while being black, going to a prestigious prep school, then Occidental College, then Columbia, and then to Harvard Law, makes you “uppity,” and a snob who probably looks down on regular folks.

White privilege is being able to graduate near the bottom of your college class (McCain), or graduate with a C average from Yale (W.) and that’s OK, and you’re cut out to be president, but if you’re black and you graduate near the top of your class from Harvard Law, you can’t be trusted to make good decisions in office.

White privilege is being able to dump your first wife after she’s disfigured in a car crash so you can take up with a multi-millionaire beauty queen (who you go on to call the c-word in public) and still be thought of as a man of strong family values, while if you’re black and married for nearly twenty years to the same woman, your family is viewed as un-American and your gestures of affection for each other are called “terrorist fist bumps.”

White privilege is when you can develop a pain-killer addiction, having obtained your drug of choice illegally like Cindy McCain, go on to beat that addiction, and everyone praises you for being so strong, while being a black guy who smoked pot a few times in college and never became an addict means people will wonder if perhaps you still get high, and even ask whether or not you ever sold drugs.

White privilege is being able to sing a song about bombing Iran and still be viewed as a sober and rational statesman, with the maturity to be president, while being black and suggesting that the U.S.should speak with other nations, even when we have disagreements with them, makes you “dangerously naive and immature.”

White privilege is being able to say that you hate “gooks” and “will always hate them,” and yet, you aren’t a racist because, ya know, you were a POW so you’re entitled to your hatred, while being black and insisting that black anger about racism is understandable, given the history of your country, makes you a dangerous bigot.

White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism and an absent father is apparently among the “lesser
adversities” faced by other politicians, as Sarah Palin explained in her convention speech.

And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because a lot of white voters aren’t sure about that whole “change” thing. Ya know, it’s just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain.

White privilege is, in short, the problem.

Watch and Learn from the Birds

In a little garden that I was sitting next to this morning I watched a bird gathering twigs to make it’s nest. It was picking them from the ground, recycling nature’s goods to build it’s home. What if we adopted this practice again? If we used the nature’s goods to build our homes, the goods that are naturally available in our surroundings? Instead of making all the homes cookie-cutter McMansions, what if we actually used our natural resources as we found them? So if there isn’t an abundance of 4×4’s in a certain area, but there is a heck of a lot of clay or Pinion Pines, why not construct a house made of that?

We can learn a lot from watching the birds, we just need to pay attention…

Looking out the Window

Eyes are the windows to our souls. Our viewpoint, our window shapes our reality… and every has a unique and individual window… we never really know if we even see the same color… it is all relative… everything is relative… relative to our reality and what we hold to be the truth.

So open your window, see whats out there… try to take it all in before the glass gets too old and you have to rely on your memory or your mind’s eye for moments.

Consumption and Bliss?

Joseph Campbell says that we should “Follow Your Bliss”. He is right. Finding what makes us happy and going for it sounds like a pretty simple idea, right? If it is so simple, why are so many of us just trying to be like one another? Why are so many of us unhappy, overweight, stressed out, overworked and in debt? Why is it so hard to do what makes us happy?

We are so consumed with the idea that we need to be the best at everything we do. We consume everything in major quantities. Spending money, mostly that we don’t even have, unnecessarily in order to make us happy, which never really happens and further fuels the cycle of wanton consumption. We are so obsessed with keeping up with the Jones’s that we lose focus and sight of our own personal wants and needs. We are a media ruled society and believe most of what we see… but that isn’t the reality, not for everyone.

We want to earn the most amount of money in the shortest amount of time. We want everything right now and do not know what it means to work, to really work for something any more. We are so lost that, of course, we cannot say that we generally follow our bliss. When we never take the time to look inside of ourselves, to find out what really makes us tick, how can we ever truly know what does make us tick?

Finding Your Passion

Passion is what drives us to do things well, really well. We do our best when we are totally engaged in what we are doing. We always want to do our best, so if that is the truth, then we should always do what we are passionate about. It is interesting that most of my thoughts along this line always head back to “Follow your Bliss” by Joseph Campbell, a great American mystic. This is one of those times.

I saw two great examples of people in action using thier passion to drive them to outdo themselves. The first one was a Badmitton player who was practicing for the big tournament that is being held tonight at the Paulistano Club. He was in the zone. I was walking by and had to stop and watch him. He was so intense, focused and really giving his all to his game. He was totally dressed for the part. He was the oldest of the competitors there, probably in his 50s or so, with a headband, sport goggles, even some kind of patch to help him see better (?) over one eye, a knee brace and new tennis shoes. He was running, sweating and hitting back the birdie every time it came to his court… his passion was unmistakable. I hope he wins tonight, we shall see.

The other was a guest trambone player with Tito Martino Jazz Band, a band that I have been watching every Tuesday Afternoon at the Livaria Cultura on Avenida Paulista since the beginning of the year. He is a tall fellow, I have seen him play a couple of times with them and now that he is a bit more comfortable he just goes for it. He blows that thing with mighty force. He sings the songs right along with Tito, he even does a little dance along with it. He is alive! His enthusiasm and passion draws a great applause each time, creating this great flow of energy which fuels all of us even more. His passion for music and being on stage is unmistakable and you can tell how much he loves it.

Finding and following your passion is everything. First you must figure that out and then the rest can work itself out. Your passion is not going to be the same as everyone else’s, that is why it is our own passion that we must find.

Looking like our Neighbor

Since we cannot choose our genes and we didn’t have an option, is that why we are sooo outwardly focused now? Why are we so interested in our outward appearance when most of us cannot help how we look. Of course there are the extreme people for one reason or another that surgically change their appearance, but for the rest of us… why are we so focused on how we look instead of how we feel?

I guess how we feel, in this climate, is directly linked to how we look. Especially since we are forced to be so consumed with the idea of “perfection”. We spend billions each year on cosmetics to look like everyone else, to help boost our self esteem but does it really work? Just because we look the same or similar on the outside doesn’t mean we are the same on the inside. What about looking inward and accepting our own natural beauty? What about accepting how we look and moving on to bigger and more important things?

Let’s look at health… internal, spiritual, mental and physical. What about those? Doesn’t health make us happy? Doesn’t happiness make us healthy? Self love is totally involved in this yet is overshadowed usually by the desire to look a certain way, to fit in with the crowd.  Why do we want to look like everyone else in the herd instead of cherishing our differences? We are not cookie-cutter versions of one another… we are all so individual, yet for some reason strive to look like our neighbor.

Good Genes

People cannot help the way they look on the outside. Their physical features are beyond their control. To judge a person by the way they look, to be inclined to someone who is naturally more attractive and assuming they are a good person is like judging a person by their family… there is an influence, but there wasn’t a choice. We always have to work with the cards that we have been dealt. It is up to us what we do with such advantages to rise above and be a better person because of it.