Awakening — An Except
Below is an excerpt from my recently published short story ‘Awakening’. I leave it here for anyone passing through, in the hope that it might spark of new line of thinking in those who read it... The full short story can be found here.
“There once was a time when a man or woman could walk as far as they wanted on the earth. They could brave plains and mountains, cross rivers and navigate oceans — often with only the stars and sun to guide them.
From their beginnings in the grasslands of the sub-Sahara, men and women spread across the globe and prospered for tens of thousands of years, living off and with the flora and fauna in relative harmony. Mother Earth, the very outdoors itself was home, being in touch and in tune and in balance with Her was a matter of survival, not a choice. For the bravest of our ancestors, the limitations of exploration were dependent on their fear of the unknown alone — boats were made to cross oceans, animals trained to aid them in their travels — and yet despite the dangers of voyaging through a world still deeply rooted in survivalist tribalism, the only boundaries were the ones that Mother Nature had carved and gouged out herself. Showing a remarkable capacity for adaptation, humankind began to take delight in discovering new environments — the thrill of walking and running and swimming and then sailing into the unknown a spark to the flame of their ingenuity and imagination. Consciousness had once again evolved, and civilisation scattered across the globe. What was once the unknown became home, new landscapes challenging man’s inventiveness and adaptivity as he learned to shape and mould the very earth herself to his liking.
As time passed, clever as he is man watched as his assertion of will over the land shaped the very destiny of the planet and so he decided to create what he called order and order became rules, and rules became commandments and commandments became laws. Boundaries became borders and borders became nations, and for the first time man was limited by more than just natural obstacles. The idea of free movement ran counter to the desire of those in control to have systemised order — order is predictable and predictability ensures the power structure remains unchallenged — and so great walls dividing countries were erected and for the very first time mankind started to mass-manufacture weapons of torture and destruction; the great age of war had begun. First men and women pointed swords and spears at their neighbours but as humans invented new and more efficient ways of harming each other guns and bombs would take their place; all in defence of a system that benefited only a very few whose lust for power and dominion perverted adventure into crusade, exploration into domination.
It has not always been this way. It may be the only thing you and I and our parents and our grandparents have ever known, and yet…it has not always been this way.
As nations grew wealthy and industrialised, access to excess and luxury became a confirmation that the system they had made must be working. As billions slaved and starved and struggled the few revelled in their achievements — built upon the backs of the unchosen — living mostly guilt-free in a bizarrely cruel paradoxical world filled both with starving eyes
affixed to hungry bellies as well as the rotting stench of tonnes of wasted food. As Mother Earth groaned with the parasitical weight of her most complex and contradictory of creations, she had come to a tipping point in her symbiotic relationship with humankind. She had provided them with plants and fruits and mushrooms and liquids that would sustain their bodies, delight their senses, intoxicate their minds and place visions in their hearts. Still they forgot their place in the natural order of the Universe. As they further removed themselves from an existence in touch with the natural world — save for it being the space in between jobs and homes and the ever-present shopping centres — they began to flirt with the temptations of a supra- existence, placing themselves high above Nature in the hierarchical order of consciousness and designating themselves as Her master. Slowly, for the first time, creation tipped the balance against creator. All because they learnt to turn her earth into bricks, her mountains into quarries, her guts into fuel.
It has not always been this way.
Everything you have been told is a lie. The system you have been sold, the status quo, is a feeble attempt to cover up the biggest struggle for power humankind has ever seen. The many are being coerced into a socio-economic system of credit-based slavery — a three-digit number thrown in their faces to determine their dignity level — all the while being kept distracted with shiny things and pretty people and manufactured fear. We know it’s wrong. We feel restless, unfulfilled. We wander the aisles of stores filled with all the wrong choices looking to fill the holes that exist perhaps because of the aisles themselves. We drive around in the cars that are supposed to make us feel like a race car driver or a secret agent and yet rarely do we even ever stop to ask if we truly want to be like a race car driver, or a secret agent.
Our ancestors travelled oceans without satellites or radar, crossed deserts on foot, summited mountains without pitons all for the excitement of heading into the great unknown and yet our great adventure is choosing a house and a car out of the same catalogue our neighbours are curating their lives out of all the while trying to convince ourselves of our unique individuality? We choose the system because it is easy; comfortable. Progress, we call it, as another over-priced coffee shop is erected in another gentrified neighbourhood; our state-sanctioned psychoactive now even less of a drive as we yell our desires out of our cars at a metal box with pictures on it. In our desire for comfort and convenience we aim to eliminate what we have now observed are two of the key components to the evolutionary survival of any genetic branch- adaptability and her precursor; adversity.
Adaptability takes bravery. It means challenging the status quo in the face of shifting conditions rather than sitting back and hoping “they” are taking care of things. It means, at an individual level, asking questions that often have answers our collective evolutionary psyche doesn’t want to hear. Perhaps we aren’t treating the rest of the world like we would want to be treated. Maybe in our lust for consumption we have sacrificed the health of the very planet that has sustained everyone you have ever known or heard of. These aren’t easy realisations to come to — often we find ourselves rigidly clinging to a worldview that doesn’t require brutal self-analysis such as this — and yet come to them as a society we must if there is hope for the next step in the evolution of this collective experience of this universe we call consciousness.
Ah — but now we come to the great “what if ” — the part where man and woman can dare to believe that there is a better way, a way instead of or perhaps in spite of this system that has been built around us. For once we accept that the system isn’t working for us anymore, the inventiveness and ingenuity of humankind as an evolutionary response to a changing environment kicks in. We begin to dream of a different way — a better way. A way that doesn’t ecologically decimate the very planet we depend upon, a way that doesn’t end with a permanent nuclear winter due to contemporaneous disagreements between mere individuals…a way where nobody goes to bed hungry, or on the streets. What other legacy can we possibly offer our children, our grandchildren, our decedents for aeons to come?
How can we face those who will carry the spark — the very same spark of life that was passed on to us from generations past to take care of and nurture for a time, our time, in this world — how can we face them when having been given the tools and technology that would allow us to even dream of achieving some semblance of an utopian ideal and eradicate much of our neighbours’ sufferings instead we cast it all aside in favour of glittering, temporary trinkets?
Will the next chapter in the book of human history we are constantly writing be another chapter of war, greed and excess? Another chapter of pious prohibition and hateful discourse over picket lines? Another chapter of ethnic extermination, perhaps, several of which the past hundred years alone has seen permanently writ into the oft tormented tome of life? Perhaps.
Or, perhaps…we’re on the verge of something quite marvellous. Perhaps our world’s groanings and grumblings under the strain of the status quo as she comes to the end of her tether is the impetus mankind needs to reignite the spark that will become the flame of ingenuity and imagination once again. Perhaps…we are on the cusp of a revolution of consciousness. Maybe you’ve even started to feel it grow inside you, sitting there hearing these words. Some days it feels like malaise — an unease — others, excitement, but underlying it all and in every corner of the globe there seems to be an electricity in the air. We watch as the proverbial storm of sociological showdown rolls in off of the water and comes barreling towards us and we cannot help but be terrified and exhilarated all at once because we know that even though within the storm lies the power to disturb our lives in some ways we dream of coming into contact with a force so powerful that we cannot walk away but as a changed person. Perhaps to be disturbed is what we desperately need, perhaps to be shaken out of our slumber and awoken to our true state of affairs an abrupt but vital action before our ability to care has withered and died.
There once was a time when a man or woman could walk as far as they wanted on the earth.
Perhaps it is time to walk without boundaries once more.
Perhaps it is time for an awakening.
