Through all the darkness, through all the shame of which men are capable, the spirit of man will remain alive on this earth. It may sleep, but it will awaken. It may wear chains, but it will break through – Ayn Rand
2025 certainly hasn’t started out well; flu has struck our home and while spirits are trying to remain high, the illness is certainly slowing us down to a crawl. Another year has passed, and my family has been blessed with the memories and experiences of 2024: so many adventures and achieved milestones. They’ve all struck a chord in my soul. A beautiful grandchild has blessed us. Individual challenges leading to great accomplishments of graduation, new jobs, wedding proposals and all the wonderful milestones our children have achieved. I am forever grateful for the opportunity to experience all of it…even the messy parts and the bugs that change our focus. More importantly, I am blessed to see what 2025 may bring…good or bad, change is afoot, change I believe while demonstrating real examples of human nature, will ring loud and uncomfortably in many ears. I believe 2025 will test humankind’s mettle like many other epochal moments of the past. I am hoping the epiphanies of the past decade and those to come in 2025 lead us towards the better…we shall see.
The interesting thing about having the flu, for me, is that it seems to turn my mind inward. Like a bug in my operating system, some unknown trigger creates a reaction not expected, but not necessarily undesired. That bug flips a switch that I have come to know too well and honestly forces a slow down in me. I become highly aware of what’s going on inside my body and the thoughts that cross my mind. Dazed, feverish dreams become colorful and their lines crisper. I tune out of what’s not in my immediate space and tune into whatever I’m focused on…my reading is more focused, whatever I watch becomes more real. Honestly, it’s like being intoxicated while being perfectly on point. I discovered this as a child, being in bed with fever. I could feel the grittiness of my skin, oily, damp, matted hairs tickled as they fell on my ears and forehead. I would listen to the rhythm of the household in the distance, the sound crisp and gently amplified in my ears. My watery eyes would see the shapes those droplets made on my pupils and the shadowy outlines in a darkened room with dream like clarity. Aside from the grossness of some aspects, I never really hated the experience. Chemotherapy had the same effect and while sleep doesn’t come easy during these bouts, I have the ability to sit still and quiet with closed eyes, listening to my breath, feeling my awareness.
This current experience has been the same. Reading a book, I received at Christmas has been that much more enjoyable and enriching: a biography coming to life from the pages in front of me. Watching action movies have a direct impact on my pulse and sense of excitement: more heightened than normal. I feel the clicking of the weapons and the labored breathing from those in the chase; the thuds and grunts from the fight scenes – exhilarating as they pound through the screen. I love listening to a variety of podcasts: pundits, characters, politicians, want to be experts and blowhards desperately making their point, dragging the listener to their side of the debate. I’ve listened to quite a few. Never have I felt the pleading of one of those participants more viscerally as I did when I heard what I’m about to share. It doesn’t matter where I heard it, the depth of your own curiosity can take you there…all I ask is that you don’t judge. Our openness to be vulnerable and hear all points of view, and our ability to think critically is dependent on our willingness to listen with a goal to understand ideas, and not confirm our own biases and opinions. My goal is always, to learn and grow.
In Search of Sincerity… Honesty
Last week, I listened to a podcast while under the influence of flu that featured Bryan Hubbard. Mr. Hubbard is journalist and an advocate of Ibogaine, a psychoactive plant-based medicine he believes and has proof that demonstrates tremendous results for soldiers who experience post-traumatic stress syndrome and has had successful impacts on opioid and other substance addiction. I won’t get into Ibogaine, a therapy that was denied legitimacy and is considered a schedule 1 substance by the Food and Drug administration earlier this year. Again, the depth of your own curiosity can take you there. I’ll leave some links at the end of this essay. Mr. Hubbard pleaded his case for almost 2 hours, and I was gripped by every word. Before closing his position on the podcast he left us with these words:
“What your audiences listen to with us is a parable about contemporary American society and where we are. I think most folks would agree that we find ourselves in the midst of an existential struggle for this country’s survival. We are living within the most beautifully dynamic multicultural society which has ever existed in human history.
For all our material wealth and technological prowess, we are also living in a brutally dehumanizing era that is hostile to individual identity. Citizens are viewed as fungible revenue units who are plugged into a set of actuarial variables designed to reduce their lives to reasonably predictable revenue streams. We find ourselves with massive government systems which enthrone themselves on the subjugation of powerless people.
Those systems commodify problems that they are supposed to solve, and they monetize sustained human misery. Government must be made to function honestly, accountably and responsibly to the genuine needs of the American people. Because if it does not, our society will inevitably collapse beneath the enormity of its corrupt decrepitude.
This is going to require a shift in social consciousness that is rooted in our universal kinship as images of an eternal Creator whose essence is almighty” “unconditional love for all of us. As your listeners hear this episode, I hope that they will hope and pray for everyone who has gathered around this cause that we will be successful. Because if we are, we will hasten the day when we can deliver good titans unto the meek, bind up the broken hearted, proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.
Lord, hasten the day and thank you for the privilege of sitting with you this afternoon. Thank you.”
When that moment of clarity finally comes, will you be listening? Will you be feeling? Will you be open?
I listened, then I listened again, then I went to the transcript to read this section and read it again. I copied and pasted the excerpt into my Notes, and read it again. My throat tightened, and I could feel my temple trembling…a man pleading for honesty and integrity to be restored. Begging that we focus our humanity and our resources to save those who are bound by ungodly experience, both mental and physical. Why? That lack of physical or mental health traps too many in internal prisons, compelling them to pain and misery, too often to a point of no return.
We are bombarded each day with many examples that foster mistrust of our institutions, our leaders, our systemic processes on which we all depend: to keep the lights on, water clean, food safe and our brothers and sisters thriving. We witness the justification of murder based on an eye for an eye – not in the movies, but on the streets of our communities. Details of wars flood news chyrons, highlighting the ‘collateral damage’: children, innocents caught in the crossfire or targeted by design. Scandal is pervasive across once sacred institutions; humility is lost and hubris celebrated. We witness the struggle embracing greed and envy as motivation to achieve. Success is rewarded when solutions are achieved to ‘commoditize problems and monetize suffering’. Hope slips away from our future generations as they are lured to put their faith in gambling or ‘influencing’ for their income, lying to achieve popularity, instead of learning, earning and growing into their possibilities. Amidst the constant cacophony of hopeless distress, Bryan Hubbard pleads, with a vision that sees the goodness and potential of his brothers and sisters, to come together, restore honesty, strengthen empathy and seek alternatives to end suffering – drive good outcomes over increasing profits or profile.
I don’t know a lot about this man, aside from what I learned today. But I know what I heard in his voice, and the sincerity with which he spoke. He was pleading for help, asking us to open our eyes and use the power of our minds, hearts and voices to end suffering. It was a courageous attempt. It struck me as a theme in these turbulent times – let’s cut through the bullshit and make life better. I believe we are witnessing a change around the world, despite some of the very real challenges in front of us today. Instead of feeling hopeless when we uncover systems and processes, things that don’t make sense to sincere and honest minds, we should see them as new opportunities to make the changes for the better. While some choose to comfortably nestle into those systems, justifying them by the benefits they gain, others seek to find a better way, knowing that focus and priorities need to fundamentally change. My wish for 2025 is that courage, and strength fills us all with the opportunity to be better, do better and not turn away because what is wrong is also profitable, or comfortable. Change is coming, whether you want it to or not, but that change could be for the better as seek a new operating model. One that focuses on creating better results…
Thank you for taking some time to be here today…
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