Sometimes people ask me "How am I doing?"

Dependent on the situation, I'll usually just look into that person's eyes with a big smile and nod my head.

But sometimes, I'll see a door that invites me to go deeper. And I'll reply:

"Do you really wanna know how I'm doing?"

Because I want to share with you how I feel.

I really do.

But how I feel. I don't wanna exchange superficial pleasantries with you or get caught up in cerebral cobwebs.

I wanna share what's alive in this moment, what yearns to live and breathe in the space between us.

So how am I?

Well, I'm okay I guess, thanks for asking.

I feel incredibly fortunate really.

But I also feel like I'm carrying a tremendous burden of Grief on my shoulders sometimes.

I feel the Grief when I go for my daily bare foot walks through the rice paddy fields behind my house and step over heaps of plastic trash along the way. Or when I see the local "farmer" making his rounds spraying chemicals and then observing the family of ducks waddling in front of me in those same rice paddy fields, drinking up those same pesticides. The same pesticides (and traces of micro-plastics and birth control pills and God knows what else) that I'm probably drinking as well. Ah the circle of Life, such a beautiful thing, it all comes back around...

Then images of that giant twice - the - size - of Texas island of plastic floating in the Pacific comes to mind, and I think how comparatively barren and lifeless our oceans have become over the decades. I feel a twinge of pain in my chest as I remember reading old Mariner accounts of the roaring seas a century or two earlier and how abundant and teeming with life they once were.

But such a different world we live in today...

Not only with respect to the absence of aquatic life, but the same with birds, insects, plants and any other form of Life that humans don't have a particular "stake" to keep alive. This includes all the vital organs of the Earth - the grasslands, the coral reefs, the soil, the old growth forests etc etc and etc. All playing an essential role in the Healthy functioning of this planet, all destroyed mercilessly at the bloody murderous hands of the suicidal species to which I belong.

And all in the name of "progress" and "development"...ah the hubris of "civilized" Modern Man - so disconnected from the living world, completely separated from the web of relationships that fall outside our self-centered human bubble.

It's a race to the finish line and it's fast approaching. Will we learn to live in harmony with the rest of Life before we extinguish ourselves from this planet along with all the other carriers of Life that we are so skillful and efficient in exterminating?

I don't know. I'm not particularly hopeful to be fully honest, but I don't know of how relevant the question is either.

The framing of the questions pits me in a position of victim to forces outside of my control, and I don't like how that makes me feel. When I play with the question, I feel weighed down with despair and disempowered.

I prefer to re-frame the question.

Rather than positing that THE world is something separate and distinct from me, it seems to me the relevant question is what can I personally do to bring Life into MY world?

You see what I did there?

It's not some objective world independent of my existence. This is the delusion that has inflicted our species, at root to the violence and destruction and blood all over our hands.

No, rather, I want to focus my presence and attention onto MY world - my thoughts and feelings, my interactions, my community, the totality of ALL my relationships. And by relationships, I'm not talking about those in the human domain. I mean relationship in the sense that every moment I exist in relationship to an entire world around me. My existence is completely dependent on the totality of this ongoing moment to moment web of relationship, which extend not only to what I may directly experience, but that extend outwards from the food that I eat, and the sweat, soil, and sunlight that collaborated in its creation. This is all part of the giant web of relationship that I dance within.

So yes, sure, the world out there is dying and is crying for all of our help. This is our collective creation though, the bigger world is but a sum of our individual smaller worlds in which we each inhabit and co-create together. So the question that I choose to live and to embody: how can I cultivate meaningful and Life affirming relationships around me within MY world? This is that mythic Hero's journey we are each summoned to embark....

So, how am I?

Well, yes, I feel Grief.

Yes, I feel outrage and anger and sadness and sometimes even despair.

But, this also means that I am alive. This means I have compassion and love for my world around me.

All the while, the birds are singing to me.

The statues outside my balcony are smiling up at me. The breeze and rays of sun Grace my face and nourish my skin.

The world is alive, and I feel extraordinarily grateful to share in this fantastic opportunity, this experience right here.

The Joy is all around me if I choose to stop and see it. But I don't want to just stop at seeing it. I wanna celebrate and dance with it. And I think that's what she wants from us. She wants us to admire her fleeting beauty. She wants us to play, to laugh, to make love to the entire world around us, and to breathe in the rich pallette of experiences we each have the keys to unlock.

This is the seed which I want to plant.

This is the story that wishes to be told through me.