It’s Time
If your heart doesn’t feel crushed, you're not paying attention.
I’ve spent much of my life anguishing over why and how we could ever treat one another with such cruelty. There’s huge tragedy in that. How that could be our way? Why would anyone contribute to so much pain? Where does that all begin? How did we get here from a heart that was only meant for love? And why is the answer to a problem that seems so obvious so hard for us to see? Is the difficulty held in the shame of what we have let ourselves become?
Is our reluctance to look at ourselves out of fear of what we might see? Because when our fear of each other, and our loss of personal worth, our insecurity - and all the things that keep us feeling less about ourselves - when those things have dominion over who we are, we have already lost the battle of being human. We’ve lost ourselves.
But in our courage, we confront the most important questions we can ask: How did this happen? How have we become this? What’s stopped us from finding our way out of it? And how can we become more?
The solution is in the hearts of men, women, and even children. I don’t think there’s very many who would deny their own heart if they truly knew their heart. The problem is we don’t know our hearts and, therefore, we do deny them. We exchange everything we’re meant to know for fear, and that’s where we live. I know that this is where we succeed or fail in the reclaiming of our own hearts.
Real change requires real heart. It’s time.
The good people of this country are sick of it. The good Blacks, the good whites, the good yellow, and red, and brown-skinned people of every nationality that make up America are sick of it; the good policemen, the good military people, the good politicians, the good religious leaders and followers. Everyone who holds their heart precious is sick of it. They're sick of the prejudice, they're sick of the fear, they're sick of the pain, they’re sick of people not treating one another with honor and respect, they're sick of anyone who thinks they're above, or better or more right, or more worthy, more important or valuable in any way than another. Honestly, we’re all just sick of living outside our own heart and within the boundaries of our fear. We’re sick of it.
I believe we’re all sick of people not trying to know, or just not caring about living their truth; not trying to understand love. We’re tired of having to discern between the right or wrong actions of leaders and people in our society that we’re all asked to respect. We’re tired of questioning what motivates bad action when good is clearly the best choice. We’re all tired of questioning a society that was built on equality, but never really seems to fulfill its promise to everyone equally. We're tired of living our privileged lives and pretending that just because poverty, injustice, prejudice, and inequality doesn't touch us, it doesn't exist. Because deep down we know it exists; we feel in our hearts. We may not see it in our neighborhoods, but we feel it because we are human, it’s undeniably touching us. And in that familiarity with one another’s pain and suffering, we need to remember that, in our truth, we know one another more intimately than any one of us can fully understand.
I know that nothing can happen to another without it deeply touching my own heart. Nothing can be perpetrated against another human being without that act touching everybody on this planet. So then why would we not choose to approach every struggle, every difficult and painful human experience from a place of healthy strength, from a place within our own hearts that only wants to allow the world to heal?
It’s time. It’s simply time to heal all the pain and anguish, all the fear and the worthiness issues, all the anger, resentment, and irrationality that inflict the human mind. And all that healing is held in the infinite forms of love that can flow through us in the blink of an eye. So why not try? Why not try to help this world heal?
Technically, I am now an old white guy.
And when the absence of love shows it’s very ugly face to me, I cannot stand it. But I can also see that, as with any situation, we need to define the problem with strength and compassion before a solution can present itself. And in the lack of love, the problem is always found in our disconnection from our own hearts.
Our solution?
Our solution is one of reconnection, of taking responsibility for our own madness, and saying enough! And then reclaiming ourselves, retrieving what we’ve lost, and moving back into our heart-centered life, back into our deepest knowing of what it is to love one another.
Yes. I’m tired, old, and white, but I know something important:
I know it’s time for us all to grow.
I know it’s time for us all to reclaim our hearts.
I know it’s time for us to all remember our truth; that we are love.
I know it’s time to be aware of the threats that build in the mind, to know the thinking, our thinking, that turns us away from our truth.
I know it’s time to stop alienating ourselves from our own hearts, to break the cycle of fear so that we might fix it from within.
I know it’s time to stop blaming the color of someone’s skin for the disconnections in their heart.
I know it’s time to teach people what it is to know better so that they can do better.
I know it’s time to stop blaming anybody because of their race, gender, or sexuality. But to look in the eyes of power, greed, hubris, pain, the lack of compassion, and all the heart-sucking qualities that can cultivate our refusal to love.
I know that our growth as individuals cannot be attained through pretending to perfect our outer world, but in doing what we can to evolve in our inner world.
I know it’s time for us to confront our darkness. To approach it with understanding and compassion. And to transform ourselves, bringing light to whatever we find dark within us.
I know it’s time to admit the truth; that we’re all tired. To see that judgment is exhausting and living in fear is worse. And for our health, we all need this to stop.
It’s time to remember that the outward appearance only reflects the light in the room, and our hand is on the dimmer switch.
I know we’re tired of the pain of false lessons. We’re tired of the inhuman approaches to life we’re told are true. We’re just tired of being lied to when in our hearts we know different.
I know it’s time to challenge those who choose not to move through their heart.
I know it’s time to hold responsible those who keep prejudice alive, to confront those who think they’re better or supreme.
I know it’s time to recognize and take power from those who came before us and did nothing to free our world.
I know it’s time to get angry in a healthy way, but never with violence. In our healthy anger, we can motivate change for anything that we have become as a culture, into whatever we wish to become as a people.
I know it’s time for people of power to use their power properly, with honor, and to protect those that are less powerful with meaningful laws rather than laws that simply help them maintain their power.
I know it’s time to live our lives with honor and dignity rather than fear the opinions of others.
I know I’m tired of the old thinking that doesn’t support the truth of what it is to be human.
And I know I’m tired of old men and women ruling this country with ideas that never change.
I know that power which is corrupted is not power. It’s weakness and it creates suffering. And as a culture, we need to identify and reclaim our “healthy” power.
And you know, I’m tired of life not being valued as always precious.
I know that, in any way, treating one another badly, even if it’s a habit, it’s a habit that I can no longer participate in.
There’s a bridge that we all need to cross. It’s a bridge within ourselves, a distance we need to span between who we’ve become and who we can become. It connects us to our heart, and approaching it requires our courage, our integrity, and the willingness to listen, not only to one another, but to our hearts, and it asks us to be willing to open ourselves to change.
Crossing this bridge, we’ll naturally ask the questions of connection:
Are we so scared of one another that we’re willing to put aside what it is to be human and to know ourselves, just so we can feel comfortable in a world that’s actually based in fear and illusion?
Are we willing to sacrifice other people for our own false sense of wellbeing? And is it even really wellbeing then?
Can we really live with ourselves knowing we’re continuing the habits of a culture that keeps us always falling short of moving from our truth; living through our human capacity to care for one another?
I’m tired and often saddened by our capacity to use fear as our guide. There is nothing that keeps us further away from our own heart, more disconnected from one another, than our fear.
I know it’s time for us all to recognize that we are all the same.
I know that if I put my knee in your back, or rob you of your dignity, or keep you from success, or when I’m unable to see you as equal, I’m not only betraying our human connection, I’m betraying myself. When I look down on anyone, it’s not that they are less - it’s because I feel less.
I know that if I choose to change, it encourages others to do the same.
I know it’s time for people to heal.
I know it’s time for people to realize that a “privileged” place has no privilege if there’s no equality, no justice.
I know that it’s okay to get angry, that “healthy anger” has its place, but not to strike out in violence.
I know it’s time to own our truth; that our differences don’t subtract from this planet, they add to it. That “we’re all made of different to add to the beauty of the world.” -Kris Wolf. And that nobody should ever have to grow up being afraid to simply live their life.
I know that parents should never need to have “the talk” with their children. That discussion that explains the bigotry and prejudice that will inevitably limit their lives. They should never need to tell them about their unique, soul-crushing reality, the shameful truth they have to endure, a reality that’s theirs alone to carry. It’s a sad truth that we have to let our children know that they may never be able to become all they wish to be, simply because they were born into this world with a skin tone.
“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.”
—Audre Lorde
Looking for more inspiration from Brian?
Check out Brian’s Call of the Heart series! You can see Brian’s full catalogue of books HERE!