When Push Comes To Love.

When push comes to shove championing your kids, defending your partner, fighting on behalf of your parent, is what we do. Don’t we? If an arsehole nicks your yunguns’ Tamagotchi or kicks their school rucksack down the road, most of us run to the rescue.

My offspring is my responsibility, usually we will not let our progeny be beaten down by nasty bullies. If push comes to shove we become fierce, helicopter parents defending our own.

Now when a country goes into melt down – as citizens of the motherland – do we not lay down our pitch forks and go to war. Well the men do, us wimmin will stand tirelessly on the side lines hugging the children and offering bottled water. Nations defend their collective family they fight, scream and put their own individual lives on the line.

The ‘us’ and ‘them’ scenario is at the root of it all isn’t it?

If ‘we’ are running out of food lets go and plunder ‘their’ rice fields.
‘They’ are running out of gas, let’s turn off the taps.
The sun ain’t shining
The wind ain’t blowing
The rain ain’t falling
‘Our’ country is in distress let’s turn to our neighbours and ask for help, and if we don’t get it let’s just go and take what we want from ‘their’ stores.

It’s 2022. Mother Nature is fierce and weary. She hangs her arms limply as the oceans struggle, the rain forests weep and greedy folk refuse to share.
Mother Nature is howling in pain as ill, old men, make frightfully bad decisions on behalf of all of us. Endlessly erroneous decisions that, like a bad headmaster, sees his school crumble because he spent all the budget on tarmacking the field for a car park.

I know a lot of us agree with a lot of them since a lot of them are realising that a lot of us are wilting under the weight of a lot of their decisions. A lot of them are beginning to realise that without a cohesive unified, organised plan, they too will become us, and when they become us – well what are they to do?

Looking after our own is imprinted in our DNA but when one side of the fence has much and the other side has fuck all then inequalities start to crack through the concrete.

Look I’m not blaming Rishi Poohknak for being rich but I do think decision making from a gold plated bunker doth not the truth see. I’m not blaming Shlongson for being a wanker, Stanley sent him to the best school in the land, a school that shovels shit on the feet of its entitled inmates and knows that the fertilisation and limited cross breeding will get results. We are under the hegemony of politicians who have superglued themselves to the seats of power, brutal ‘thems’ who couldn’t give a monkeys about the ‘us-es’
I’m being simplistic, of course they care about us but only enough to get our votes so they can continue to keep us all in their thrall.

There comes a point when defending our own is not enough. Us and them is only valid when the THEM is so mighty that all of US become one. I know John Lennon sung about it, Charlie Chaplin made films about it and Shakespeare wrote reams on it but now seems the time to put something new into practice.

When one of us is maligned all of us are maligned.
When some of us are displaced all of us are displaced
When a megalomaniacal dictator threatens a people with mass distinction we are all threatened.
As we sit by and watch the destruction of cultural palaces, ancient monuments, a whole nation, is it enough to see the situation at a distance?
Sympathy is detached, empathy is getting down and dirty with the ‘victims’
I am as guilty as the next man for weeping into my crocodile soup. I know I’m not doing enough. But to be honest I’m not sure where to put myself.
Selling newspapers on the corner, handing over old blankets, giving money. All of which I and millions of others are doing, seems inadequate. We applaud the fighters defending ‘theirs’ but does it not all seem so futile. Killing each other whilst great minds think of ever cleverer ways to destroy humanity. War heads, missiles, nuclear fuck ups. Is it not the work of the Devil? Why can’t those minds be put to work to help the us, all of us, instead of trading bombs and guns for more useless conflicts. Belief systems that believe in ‘them and us’ should be taken down, systematically, from heart to peace. The manly notion of defending our own should be replaced with a female voice of peace through heart.

Somehow a change of thought has to be adopted by everybody, and I do mean everybody, where our thinking mirrors who we really are. A bunch of animals who can think and create. animals who have learnt the power of speech. Animals who need each other, who aren’t frightened to share, animals that can put aside their differences and recognise that we are more of the same.

I was sitting in my garden, buttercups and daisies everywhere. I was sitting in the garden and I thought when push comes to shove just how much would I do to defend my territory, my family, home, my children, my neighbours, my life. Thank God I haven’t been put in that position – yet – and I hope I never will be, but not three hours away people who look like me, think like me, are being ousted. Their lives robbed. People, from the land of my forefathers, are being robbed of their lives by the same people; warmongers who can only think about ‘them and us, warmongers who bank on us also adopting the same ideas.

I loathe and abhor them, those men of power, they disgust and appall me. But I am stuck. My mentors tell me to keep visualising Peace, To keep praying and meditating on the correct outcome when we all stand together against tyranny. So I obey. The time is coming I can feel it in my water, I hope there is time for me to still be part of the change.

Yesterday I went to three 70th birthday parties in one place. Oldens who still believe in a better future, even though we’ve only got a bit, of it. left. It was a joy to sit with actors and artists, teachers, thinkers, workers and the retired, reminiscing about what was. Eating shared food and drinking communal wine, we were lucky to be there to be reminded that w all had a rich life but that all good things come to an end.
We toasted the birthday gels and knew that it was a a communal belief – until we all take our last breath we will all help to make the good times roll.