Happy Midsummer, everyone! A few days late, to be sure, but here we are!
Midsummer slipped by once again, which has become the usual anymore. My hunny’s birthday is June 30th, so I always end up forgetting about Midsummer as a result. It’s always so weird that we have Summer Solstice, which is modernly (not through all time) considered the beginning of Summer on June 21st and then Midsummer’s Day on June 30th. Midsummer’s day is a very old holiday, though, not usually on calendars and mostly forgotten anymore – but it reminds us that the end of June USED to be the middle of summer before we decided the Solstices were the beginning of the season instead of the mid-points. Humans and time are fickle things and it’s funny how history moves.
Speaking of history… we are in some real historic times right now. It’s hard to miss the great upheavals that are happening in society at the moment all around the world. The year 2020 has been a hell of a ride. The novel Coronavirus (aka COVID-19 or SARS-COVID-2) was discovered at the end of 2019, traveled through China and Asia, into Europe, and then into the Americas and is currently uncontrolled in the United States. At the same time, as a result of the failure in government action, unemployment is skyrocketing, and the systemic inequalities (I’m talking about racism, classism, and ableism here) built into our social systems (healthcare, employment, government protections and more) are decimating black and low-income communities (two separate communities there, but with a bit of overlap) and the personal racism is really jumping out.
Combine that with the protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd by three police officers and we have a hell of a storm that we’re facing in the world right now. Those protests affirming that Black Lives Matter and demanding change in our society spread all around the world because those issues are NOT exclusive to the United States, and while we COULD be a leader of change in the world, the people in power here (the people with government authority and the people with the most money, again, two separate groups with a bit of overlap) are stubbornly refusing, so things are escalating instead, as is appropriate.
Suffice to say, this is HARD. As Twitter user @_danilo posted today, the people experiencing this time period will either die in the process or come out traumatized and that is heavy, hard, and painful to realize. We are being tasked right now to survive physically (not to die), to preserve ourselves mentally/emotionally/spiritually, to keep our lives going somehow (pay the bills, eat the food, clean the house), make and survive these changes, and somehow determine what is true and who in this world is being real and honest. It’s a LOT. It feels like more than anyone else has ever faced.
I was thinking about how in the 50s and 60s we planning for and dreaming of a society of leisure, free time, and personal pursuits – robots that would do our house work, machines that would do factory work, computers that handle paperwork, farms that would produce more food than we’d need – and instead of freeing up leisure time, the advances we HAVE achieved have driven wage increases down, replaced skilled positions, put more money in millionaire’s pockets (we have billionaires now!), and created a society where each household needs more working hours to cover the same expenses than it did in the 50s. We have less leisure time than ever before and inflation has driven up the cost of basic goods so much there’s nothing left over for high cost items like home-ownership or healthcare.
I do not say this to drive anyone to despair. But if you’re feeling stressed out and overwhelmed right now, there’s a really good reason for it. Even as it feels as dreadful as it does, this kind of calamity is common before great changes. I am not about to promise that change is easy because it almost never is. I am not going to say that change is not traumatic, because that’s rarely true. But it’s usually better on the other side than it is before we head through it, so I am REALLY hoping that’s what this is all about.
And it doesn’t HAVE to just be hope. I’m doing what I can to contribute to the changes I want to see in this world – if I have to live through all this chaos, desperation, pain, hurt, and trauma in the world, then I am going to do what I can on all fronts to shove that chaos and discomfort towards growth and positive change. We are seeing all the places where there are issues and problems in society and the world, so while things are already uncomfortable and falling apart, we might as well fix them. So let’s do it.
Let’s reach out to one another (appropriately socially distanced, with face masks on – YAY internet!), find out what all the needs and hurts are, and fix them. Let’s reach back to the ancestors and tap into their wisdom. Let’s look around to the spirits and get their input. With all the resources and insights around us, we are able to make this world a better and more beautiful place.
As a favorite poet of mine said:
“Another world is possible, and we can make it real.”
~ Saul Williams
