Good Vibes, Fizzy Sunshine, and the Pursuit of World Peace

Well now.

It appears the whole damn world has gone off the deep end.

Our us-and-them-ness is running our prize-winning pig of a planet into the ground. Or hell, maybe humanity has run its course. Or the religious zealots have finally succeeded in hurrying up those pesky End Times after all.

But whatever the hell is going on, here we are in the middle of it all. Whether it’s our own damn fault, or whether we’re being toyed with by something cosmic, we’re not handling ourselves well.

At all.

We are so not walking a mile in our another’s moccasins.

And we are so not getting the big-ass log out of our own eye before pointing out the tiny little speck in someone else’s eye.

Instead, we stay very, very busy judging and hating (disguised as tough love, in case you didn’t know) our sisters and brothers while we conveniently forget how much grace and mercy have somehow been bestowed on us and our own very messy, very imperfect lives.

We’re lashing out in every direction looking for someone to blame—and by golly, if we humans are good at one thing, we’re fucking gifted at finding someone to blame.

Every icky thing about us is coming to the surface these days, loud and proud.

And judging by millennia of human history, we’ve been feeding and breeding this shit all along, but here lately it’s coming out to play in broad daylight.

Things aren’t getting worse, y’all—they’re just becoming very, very obvious.

So yay for the internet, and yay for us humans becoming jaded and awake as hell—or trying to, at least—and yay for having access to everything all over the world, all at once.

I guess. 

I’m just getting the feeling we’re all (well, a lot of us, anyway) realizing we can no longer blindly believe the stories/news/history we’ve been told after all.

Anyway, ta-da, I’ve got an idea: 

We’re gonna fight the forces of evil together!

Or in the re-current-every-four-years case in the U.S., the lesser-of-two-evils, which is just bullshit in the every kind of way, but seriously, we’re going to influence the energy around us.

Now you know this is possible—like when someone with bad vibes comes around, you can just feel it. Only, we’re going to bust in with really good vibes instead of bad vibes.

It’ crazytown, I know.

But here’s what we’re gonna do:

I want all the hippies and peaceniks and Buddhists and pacifists and just generally nice folks to have a sort of space hug together…

…we’re gonna put out a soft, fluffy, puffy cloud of la-la, woo-woo, airy-fairy unicorns and rainbows and all-around good vibes.

I’m serious as a country song, y’all; we’re going to pool our collective positive energy to change the world.

Because we humans need a radical attitude adjustment.

Because right now I feel such immense sadness and despair and concern and anger and betrayal on so many levels. And I know I’m not alone.

Because something has to give—the world, and this giant and powerful country called the United States in particular, is a ticking time bomb of injustice, violence, finger-pointing, polarization, and rage.

Because racism and all kinds of -isms, for that matter, are becoming openly popular, yet incredibly sneaky at the same time. As in, we can’t say, “I’m not a racist, but…” and not be a racist.

Because responding to anyone’s deeply human longing (and right) to matter as much as, not more than, others with “all lives matter” is right up there with asking why white people don’t have a white history month. This is about humanity—it’s not a fucking competition.

Because “liberty and justice for all” should be more than words we memorize. After all, ill-treated humans don’t like being ill-treated.

Because our kids and their kids and all of us deserve a better world than the one we’re collectively creating right now.

Because every shitty thing is happening all at once right in front of our eyes.

Because it’s time we learn from history rather than washing, rinsing, and repeating for another few thousand years.

Because I want to be better and do better and create a better world. And I want you to do it, too.

Because I believe we are all one living, breathing, functioning being, and that what we think, feel, and do affects us all more deeply than we even know.

Because we keep trying to kill, ban, outlaw, and get rid of the things we don’t love about our human family, and thus ourselves.

Because we also think we can ban, outlaw, and kill the things we don’t like without ever figuring out how to just plain uproot them.

Because I have faith that we’re called to act as one cooperative being, not as rivals, even (or especially) when we don’t agree.

Because I believe there is one God, one Great Spirit, one Creator, one Universal Divine, one Source; one whatever you want to call it.

Because we are all children together, and every single person and thing is connected on this planet.

Because no matter how hard we try, we cannot possibly separate ourselves from each other.

Because we can’t say we want peace and harmony,

and then say “But…,”

or drop some bombs,

or build a nation-sized wall,

or poison one another’s water and food,

or rob one another blind trying to get ahead,

or continue in our at-all-costs pursuit of power and might,

or keep killing each other, one accident after another—

and actually want peace and harmony.

Because is there anything more important than love?

Is there?

So that’s my idea.

We’re going to change our collective attitude, as flim-flam as that sounds. But I think it’ll work.

I want you to start right now for just a hot little second or two.

I want you to feel the collective power of our good vibes.

Picture some light and a bunch of good energy radiating around yourself—

like a sort of fizzy, sunshiny vibe.

And picture that fizzy light around people you like, which is easy, but also the people you loathe and the shitty things you loathe about them.

You may very well be justified in your loathing, but do the fizzy sunshine thing anyway.

Do this for a few seconds or a few minutes or for a whole long time once in a while. Concentrate on love and peace and harmony and good things instead of bad things.

It can’t hurt.

Picture this energy of fizzy, sunshiny goodness radiating around evil politicians and around the people you blame and around the people who make your blood boil and scare you with what they’re doing to your country and to the world.

Even though you’re right and they’re wrong, do it.

This, friends, is how we’re going to change things.

We can’t keep pounding at it all like Whack-a-Mole, because that’s not working.

Yes, we really can affect change with our collective positive energy.

Try it.

You’ll see.

We’ll all see.

But don’t you think for a minute I’m talking all “thoughts and prayers” here—I’m talking about deliberately re-steering the course of our collective soul.

I’m talking about changing the atmo, the air, and the course of our consciousness.

Remember, we’re all one living, breathing, functioning being—we exist together on this planet.

We can’t get away from each other no matter how hard we try—isn’t it time we figure this out?

So here’s your homework—

When you feel despair and anguish and anger, which I realize happens umpteen times a day anymore, picture that pretty light of goodness and love and fizzy sunshine, or whatever works for you, wrapped around something, whether around your family, or out in the yard around your bird bath, or around the idiot who cut you off with his SUV this morning, or around the building you work in, or the stack of coffee cups at Starbucks.

And remember to wrap that fizzy sunshiny goodness around yourself, too.

Be the change, friends.

Be the change.

Start doing this now and then. Or all the time. Or just when you remember it. It’ll add up.

But seriously, I’m not talking about ass-sitting and daydreaming—be a useful person!

Do things! Do good things! Make good things happen! Make things better! Say something nice to someone! Give the jackass who cut you off a happy wave instead of the finger!

Just do good things—be a nice person, even when it’s hard.

I mean, why not?

And tell someone else to do this, because friends, we’re at a crossroad here.

We’ve got everything to lose—and we’re doing a fine job of that, but you know what?

We’ve also got everything to gain.

Everything.

So do the world a favor and be fizzy and sunshiny today, okay?

Yeah, yeah, maybe it sounds flim-flam, but then again, we used to think the world was flat, so maybe my idea’s not all that iffy in the grand scheme of things.

Again—

Be the change.

If it’s good enough for Ghandi, it oughta be good enough for the rest of us, right?

Let’s all be the change we want to see in the world.

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