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i blame the state

i have realized that i have almost no ability to assign individual blame to folks – folks who commit serious crimes, folks who can’t survive in the system, folks who are depressed or unfocused, kids who are fat.

i blame the state. the government. the system. the man.

in almost every circumstance, i believe it is possible to find personal happiness, to shift perspective enough to live powerful lives that uplift the people around us. i do, however, think it is a privilege to even have the space to step back and consider an internal path to happiness.

not the privilege of the wealthy per se…it also seems to be a practice of wisdom, amongst those who work too much and live lives of duty more than dreams.

poverty, inequality, insufficient and/or biased education, corporate dreams, abandonment, colonization, sexism, domination, and especially racism…these dividers that so far have defined us as human beings have worked effectively to create containers for our potential. we cannot be contained, so we overflow, molten, or we crash at a tectonic level. the result is the infrastructure of failure and misery and violence.

its become a part of my understanding of nonviolence, actually – to always step back and look at the story that led to the moment, be it a moment of violence or other suffering. even, when the moment is most tragic, most incomprehensible, most awkward, most betraying, most…bad – to see it as a result. not the final result, but a result along the path, and a lesson…this is what happens when the state accumulates power, instead of the community growing and sharing power, or the individual becoming a beacon of power.

i may sound abstract, but it is a whole way of looking at things. it is a way to grieve when something happens…”i have someone to blame!”…it is a way to displace someone’s hurtful behavior…they are the result of systems, this behavior isn’t personal.

and when the world seems incomprehensible, it is the clearest way for me to understand, to experience my feelings through an analysis with a clear story.

it is not our purpose to suffer.