Suzanne’s Blog for 12/15/2022

Blog

As we approach the holiday season. Hopefully we learn to listen to the silence and follow the flows that guide our conscience towards doing good deeds and bring great care to a world in need.

We have so much that we can offer others. We have a country that can produce great quantities of food … but at times plow it under because of markets not being prepared to handle some influxes or governments getting in the way of distribution to those in need.
We have too many in our world that believe they are entitled to have their cherished illusions without any effort on their part.
And we have (on a global level) people starving while we plow food (going to waste) back into the ground.
What happened to the concern, sharing, and care?
I believe when we do not see suffering in person … it is easy to ignore the suffering of others.
Too many live in a bubble that has no windows into the real world. When that happens, we lose compassion for what takes place in countries that have ineffective governments, wasteful leaders, and inadequate education that would allow for alternatives to be found for the shortages that currently continue to cause the suffering.

The sharing of knowledge, tools, skills, machinery, and techniques could solve so many problems if we could really see the need and be willing to respond to what is happening.

We live in a world where great possibilities are being blocked by those that desperately need to control the minds, wallets, and feelings of the masses.

The doorway to greater expansion, compassion, and awareness is through education. Not just book learning but experiential types of education.

Having left home at 15 (to go to school in New York City), gave me an insight into another reality. Leaving the US when I was 18 to go live and work in Germany during the Cold War with the Berlin Wall still up, and great tension between the East and the West, gave me even more insight into the suffering, challenges, and experiences of those that lived through World Wars and were still occupied by the Allied Forces.

Traveling to Israel during that time gave me additional insights into the conflicts that have existed for 4000 years in the Middle East and make one recognize that such long standing conflicts cannot be easily solved with the shallow platitudes of people who do not understand the deeper, underlying problems.

Other countries see most of our people as those who are not educated in any way that can make a difference in their world.
So why would they allow our opinions to even matter (the tiniest bit) when those countries and their people are suffering and struggling with massive problems that do not have easy solutions.
I know that when we demand that all our education should require in depth study abroad, languages, and the integration into other societies … that is when (as a world) we could begin to come together because we understand culturally the deeper needs of others.
We have a type of self-involved bias that is born from a tremendous lack of awareness of how others live.

I hope for the shifts from our government to demand stronger levels of truth in education that will allow eyes to be opened, hearts to expand with greater compassion, and a populace with the skills to meet the tremendous demands of a world in a place of profound change.
I know the heart of Americans is ready and right there I know Americans are willing. But we do not have all the necessary tools to open those places where we can be a healing force for good and a beacon of hope for greater freedoms for all of mankind.
It is up to us to educate ourselves with the information from history and by paying attention to the integrated reporting of those critical bits that are outside our purview.
We cannot wait lazily in front of the television, phone, or computer for it to give us the truth that we seek. Those systems will never give us what we seek.
We will have to work at it by going to libraries, doing research, and listening and reading books that will give us other viewpoints that cause us to reconsider our positions.

Such things are uncomfortable and that is why no one wants to do them. But I find they can be tremendously enjoyable as I believe minds are hungry for new insights and perspectives rather than just seek to validate what we believe we know.

The truth is that we know nothing.
But we can attempt to shift that if we are willing to go about it slowly, methodically, and with the desire to really get to the bottom of an issue.
There is just too much information out there to be able to become an expert in anything without a life-long effort to continue to learn.
A curious mind is to me the most interesting of things.

A person who has traveled extensively and for long periods of time in foreign places can give insights that are profound, expansive, and honest.

And living a life where complacency is to be avoided at all costs is a life that I want to live.

~Suzanne Wagner~