How Do You Keep Yourself Safe?

A Community Consciousness and Brain Health Essay.

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”- Plato, Philosopher

How do I keep myself safe?

It has been the ultimate question for thousands of years of human history.

How do you keep your family safe?

How do you keep your community safe?

Physicist, Albert Einstein said, “The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.”

But how do you decide? How do you convince your reptilian brainstem and protective limbic system that you live in a friendly universe, which is supporting your growth and your ability to thrive?

The questions is “How do I keep myself safe?” Especially when for some of us, even our homes and communities don’t feel safe.

How do I keep myself safe, when I feel alone, separate and outside, judged and labeled by people I respect, love and admire.

How do I keep myself safe when my very survival, my ability to earn a living, find food and shelter seem threatened if I express my inner desires for love, companionship and community?

In considering these questions, you also need to address a bigger question: “What is self on a cellular level, on an individual level, on a community and support system level and even on a global level?

Where do you fit in the often puzzling universe? Where is your tribe, your system, your group or community?

Perhaps you feel like the center of your universe but what is your universe? What are you connected to? Where are you part of the fabric of life?

You might be asking yourself, “How do I maintain my connection to self, family, religious organizations, work environments, the larger community and even God and the universe when I face choices that leave me feeling alienated, distressed and a stranger in a strange land.”

And if you don’t like the way you feel at the center of your universe you may wonder, “Who can change my world?”

You can. I can. She can. You and me and she.

As Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed it is the only thing that ever has.”

This is what we will explore here.

I am here.

This is a glimpse into a thousand shades of green in my chosen home, family, community, and planetary consciousness:

Squinting Against The Light

Squint against harsh light

all shades blend

distinction a mass of loss

diversity a wash with only what is visible

prescribed in ordinary, naturally reflected green

labeled, categorized, common

purple, red and brown separated out

numbered wavelength 510

wedged between blue and yellow

trying to blend out indigo and orange.

I have to consciously see the succulent

green, lightly speckled

dark nourishing tea green

verdant knowledgeable snake green

relaxing turtle shell green

the dark almost black of shadow green

and poplar green fractal leaves

off the Berkshires’ roof

surrounded with a thousand shades of green.

Nourishing and threatening

cracking thunder voices bring

a sunlit rainbow hue of green

Water drowning seedlings

with nutrients and advice

washing away the dirty,

the earth arid in the sunbeam

Each individual leaf there witness,

to judge and serve the diversity in

a thousand shades of green.

It turns out I have a photographic memory for jokes, even though someone once pointed out that technically that would be called an audiographic memory. We don’t always understand the meaning of what we are looking at. One way to sleep better is to really see what is around us in our lives while we are awake. This can be a challenge, as this anecdote from Sherlock Holmes illustrates:

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson go camping. About three o’clock in the morning, Holmes nudges Watson and says, “Look up. What do you see?”

Watson replies very specifically, “Millions of points of light.”

“What does this mean?,” asks Holmes.

At this point, Watson launches into, “Well, if I look at it from an astronomical point of view, I know that each point of light is a star around which planets are revolving. If I look at it from an astrological point of view, I see that Cancer is rising. And further, I can tell from the arrangement of the constellations that we are in the Northern Hemisphere and it is about three o’clock in the morning.”

Holmes’s reply is quick and to the point: “You idiot, somebody stole our tent!”

Remember, Sherlock Holmes is the one who said, “Looking is not the same as seeing.”

My job is to help people see. I would love for you to join me in changing the world:

Change the World With Me

While we are each unique,

you are not alone. Experiences

shaped by our pondering of words.

A three minute exercise

a line of people to tell my story,

then moving along I have two precious moments

faster I speak kneading letters into time

Along the line I move

facing you with a single moment

in space. What will I share?

knowing these may be my only words

to you. My tongue no longer able

to squeeze the syllables

my heart takes over

choosing a few short messages. Hope

for later moments to satisfy urgency.

Don’t go, change the world with me

I know, I know there is pain

and a world of hurt inside the skin

flow rivers of choices,

blood and sweating

out the pain

calmed by gems, by fertile earth.

Don’t go, now that you hear me.

Listen we can change the world

And if you cannot stay

I hope at least these last words

speak of love and hope and change.

Robert M. Sapolsky in Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers talks about the way our response to stress influences the quality of our life. A zebra’s life can be stressful, not enough to eat, lions suddenly coming out of the tall grasses but the zebra responds to the situation at hand, in the moment. If a lion comes out of the dry brown savannah grass, a hungry hunter, the zebra takes off running. The zebra will either successfully out run the lion or not. If the zebra is successful eventually it will stop running and start grazing again. One of the difference between zebras and humans is once the zebra has gone back to eating it doesn’t have a tape going in its head,

“Why do lions always come after me?’

“I knew I shouldn’t have gone there.”

‘Why didn’t I listen to my intuition?”

“Where was the herd leader?”

“Why wasn’t he protecting me?”

“I am never speaking to him again.”

In your head it seems like a conversation, you might even imagine what you will say to the other person the next time you see them, but there is no communication happening, no connection.

How would your life be different with less negative self-talk, more connection and communication?