It's the Bliss

 

As one of our children is still home from a college winter break, I’d wondered how much of the news was she taking in? Then I thought if she had, what was she hearing? And how did she process it? As a mom who feels much older than dirt, based on my living more than most. My soul feels tired.

I look at people like Bernie Sanders and wonder, how the hell does he do it? All that energy he expends. It’s simply amazing. I marvel at it because he’s about twenty years my senior, and I cannot imagine having that much vim and vigor at that age, much less my still being alive at his age now. I’d had a ton of energy for a majority of my six plus decades. Yet life in its seemingly unusual combination of events and experiences thrown my way has helped reduce that energy. Even as much as I have forged ahead to gain energy through diet, exercise, meditation, and entering a couple of new fields of work in the last few years. One energized me and the other tore me down. However, that energy now is just not there. My Mojo appears gone forever as if stolen.

Years ago, my forever husband and I decided we would have retirement funds because maybe it was practical. Yet, we agreed we’d never truly retire. Retirement was for people who didn’t have a set mission. We had too much to accomplish, as we’d pictured getting a Bed and Breakfast up in the mountains, staying in running shape and having a meal every day together. Yeah. That was our dream after children in our sixties, to somehow serve others, watching them enjoy life. I’ve always been a people watcher to the point my mother when I was around age six told me to “Stop looking…”. I was curious how people who weren’t me functioned. I continue to stare to this day, watching how people open doors or just walk through them and various interactions in public.

Even in the tumultuous times that my husband and I stood in, with my background, our shifting of careers that seemed chaotic and the crimes we had to deal with that victims rarely overcome without some major damage, we still dreamed. We still held onto bliss in the moment, the past and the future. It was the bliss that helped us forge ahead when our days were darkest.

The two of us knew how to be grateful. Also, we knew not to keep the news of the happenings of the world surrounding us constantly. We’d kept up with reading a few newspapers that we’d trusted before and after the trial that we’d been sequestered for, which was an unusual happening. Victims and their spouses aren’t usually sequestered for a kidnapping and rape trial; however, when white men want to play dirty there is no stopping them. For they’ve held the reigns for centuries.

Yes, you reading this may be a white man from and or with a white family. Perhaps not understanding where I’m coming from or going with this piece of writing. Yet I need to tell the world, as does every woman, every color, everything that is not white, male, straight, Christian how they’re pissing on our bliss, because those white men are scared. Though being scared is inexcusable. They’re scared because they know what they’ve done for centuries was evil, vile and that some form of Karma may come back to bite them in the ass. However, that isn’t who the rest of us are. The majority of all the white people and people of color who aren’t male, straight and Christian aren’t looking for the war some of those white, male, straight, Christian seem to desire. No, they aren’t. Too, neither are the rest of us who are of color, non-Christian, female, immigrant, and/or LGBTQ+ we are not looking for skirmishes of any kind.

It’s not that we cannot or will not defend ourselves, we can. Trust me, I’m well-trained. I’ll say that. It’s just that, it would be a lot easier if we could agree on equal leadership, equality in power and that everyone in power would abide by our constitution and its words of “…By the people, For the People…”. Currently, that’s not happening because of a white man’s fear. Only he thinks he knows exactly what everyone else would do, who isn’t him, and he wants total power to thwart his unfounded fears. There is no use for pockets when you’re dead.

There is no total power to be had when you’ve conjured up fear. That power eventually fails. This is no longer a large world to divide and conquer. This world now is one we must repair together, feed the starving, embrace the immigrant, and pay reparations to those this country has wronged.

Yes, our journey as a United States is all of that. We need to share that race car and those blocks we played with during recess in kindergarten. It is that simple. And when we do that sharing, we bond well. We strengthen. I’m not going to say it’s easy. I’m not going to say it’s Heaven. But I am going to say it’s a haven of bliss in life. A bliss we all need to have, because some struggles are much worse than others. Let’s not allow our struggles to increase by giving into the fear of some small white men and their sycophants that appear to hold absolute power over the hundreds of millions of people in the US. They won’t hold that power so long as we resist and get those whom we have elected to do their jobs without fear. This is for all the people now.

Going back to whether our children understand what is occurring, some do. As much as I’d like to stick my head in the sand, I can’t afford to, but others have been and are still in the dark. It’s their bliss, perhaps the only way they think that they can survive. There are many others who haven’t been so fortunate to know more than a minute of bliss in a week. Yeah, imagine that. I remember a few white, straight, Christian men in my life. They wanted only to enjoy all of life, have no strife; however, their plan? Keep others down, look down on others, torture others. And in the end, they even tortured not just their own blood, but as well their own straight, white, male, Christians too. They buried their sons. With that, their bliss was diminished. I know. I watched it. Let’s not let those handfuls of the fearful and fearmongering holding elected and appointed offices diminish our bliss. Yes, there are ways to bring up our bliss, we just must find out how to bring our bliss to a higher level. That’s where we will find our energy to resist, progress and win the battle for our country’s soul.---Jody-Lynn Reicher