Optimism you old, tried and true friend, you’ve been hiding, curled at the edge of oozing madness in a world consumed by plague, political strife and racial division. Ah, but say, “I’m here, I’ve been with you all along on every path of despair, when the weight of the world seemed unbearable, through every trial I whispered, “Have hope.”
As the blighted sun begins to set on a year that saw democracy decimated, paused and then begin to slowly rise from the depths of the bottomless pit; in a year that saw racial injustice loom louder and larger than ever before, causing radical global action with more yet to come; in a year when a worldwide pandemic laid waste everything humans hold dear; health, family, housing, togetherness, education, careers, industry, food and essentials like toilet paper; in a year where hundreds of thousands of lives were lost, the medical infrastructure ravaged, health care workers overtaxed while a soulless leader and a Republican led Senate failed to care; in a year where people died alone, loved ones, friends, and so many icons, we pause to recognize and reflect on how to move forward. Not in the ways of old but by implementing new and innovative methods to transform an antiquated and broken America.
The Trump family brought America to the brink of destruction, the nation’s checks and balances raped, its’ coffers pillaged by self-serving, power thirsty, greed mongers. Illumined, were all the things wrong with this country and its broken institutions and it revealed that more than seventy million people are unable to intellectually decipher and discern democracy from dictatorship. It got so dark from 2016-2020 that many fell into a state of fear and despair. I’ve often thought that the Covid-19 virus was the symptom of a “dis-eased” nation, not the other way around. Those of faith prayed, those prone to protests, marched, while the other side hurled threats and violence at elected officials.
But, beyond the darkness, it was clear there was a breathtaking dawn emerging.
Change comes in times of overwhelming uncertainty; it craves the fertile, rich, soil where blood has flowed like a river. Change comes when good people witness the worst in mankind and gather together to wash away the charred and ashen crust of injustice, with the tears of yesterday’s pain.
It is a time of planting new seeds and uprooting the old ones. A door has been opened giving us an opportunity to fill every room in the house of integrity with impenetrable democracy, to implement laws which prevent dictators from taking office ever again; it is a time to relegate racism to the history books, mended and healed by today’s youth and future more enlightened generations, while the old guard continues to fall away. Integrity longs for a seat at the table. Compassion hungers to be found in every heart. Equality demands to be implemented in every corner of the world. Love seizes the opportunity to become the voice of the powerful, the harbinger of good intentions and to be the forebearer of all things change.
Optimism breeds hope, hope breeds enthusiasm, enthusiasm breeds action and action produces change. After four years of lawlessness, autocracy and fascism, more than fifty years of systemic racism, police brutality and racial profiling and more than two hundred years of women being second class citizens being paid less than men, it is time for a revival. We must get it right, this will be the last time all pillars of evil are aligned with the light of the majority who hunger for right-use-ness and fight for change. This may be the only time that all elements have finally been exposed with such complete transparency, that there is no more room for complacency or excuses.
The time is long overdue and the spiritually awake, the socially conscious and the politically passionate are ripe for the cause of doing what is good and right and true for humanity. This time we will, we must.
Ariaa Jaeger is a spiritual teacher, counselor and author whose death in the Alps in 1993 inspired her works and writings of today.
To learn more visit her website at ariaa.com