Learning to Roar

Clearly there is something wrong. Something out of balance, leaving a bad taste even when you like what you’re eating (or are being fed). In many ways I see madness all around.

The lawsuit and the overall crackdown on the bike community in NYC is my little piece of this insanity, relatively benign in the grand scheme of things. The illness has roots that are far deeper, with effects far worse and more unjust.

The problems of the first world are a joke in comparison to those of the “2nd” and “3rd.” Bringing awareness to this truth is painful and complicated as you very quickly must face your own tacit complicity. In many ways the activist community functions as a support group in which compassion is the foundation for facing our own ugliness. We bring awareness not to incite, but to spread the opportunity for small changes, decisions based on the broader context in which the whole-cycle is considered before moving forward–Learning to navigate the journey between the world we live in and the one we dream for together.

So there is a wholeness to one’s approach. All forces that question the current paradigm are considered a direct threat to Power and are subject to the militant wing of the state most often represented by the police. As they go about there job, these people often suspend their humanity, becoming mindless and merely part of a system designed to absorb and destroy dissent, regardless of right or wrong.

So there is a problem of distributed guilt in which no one person or entity is at fault and all participants can easily deflect accusatory questions.

There is an apparent seamlessness to our everyday lives and our job is to tear at the walls revealing the hundreds of little mistakes and problems, circumstances that don’t add up and feel wrong in your gut.

So we make messes and make mistakes, sometimes exhibiting the very behavior we wish to change on the larger scale. And we’ve integrated that truth as well, admitting our faults, accepting our contradictions, standing on our little piece of what feels just and learning to hold it in our hearts, if only to teach your piece to another. Protecting our own origin as a stepping off point for a series of principled stands and learning experiences.

Perfection was always an illusion anyway.