Warum: Stephen's whys

Warum 

#1 My tribe 

I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. I recall elementary school, pledging allegiance to a flag everyone I knew spoke of in reverence. My daily ritual indoctrinated me into something larger – my presence as an American. 

America stood for freedom. The history we learned spoke of people coming from all over the globe, not for something better for themselves, but for something better for their children. They came to America for possibility. 

I grew up knowing I was that possibility. My lineage were immigrants coming from Russian and Italy in that search. I bear that responsibility to create what’s possible. Yet, today, that curiosity to find out who I am reveals something less than reverential. 

That common thread of what we have in common, how we are all, in this country, people from some other place seems to have been forgotten. We focus on what divides us, and we have little or no regard for the people who were here before any of us came here. We reap the benefit of taking that land and bear no responsibility for its current use. Community has been lost. 

I understand the irony of pledging allegiance in a country born in rebellion. If I swore to be in alignment with that sense of rebellion, if I could swear to be allegiant to a value, to an ideal, to an idea; and if that idea was good, worthy of someone’s trip across the globe shining as a beacon through the unknown to join a community of shared traditions and a tradition of sharing our histories, then I could stand proudly while pledging. 

Today that flag isn’t something I’m proud of. And that hurts. It hurts for me to write it, it hurts to feel it. That flag has become the symbol of what it fought against in its infancy. America continues to imperially take what it wants. My silence is unspoken consent to that practice and that consent is a gossamer cancer on the dreams of that boy who pledged to rebellion in hopes that we could be something better, something good. 

These states are no longer united. The power of a country that is sometimes one country and other times, 50 states has been usurped. We are messaged to be in continual opposition. Opposed to our own interests and therefore, as we live in community, with one another. 

The Republic no longer represents the people. The machinations to keep the power in the hands of the few who wear the guise of being in the hands of the many are fighting with all of their might to preserve an oligarchy that calls itself a democracy. Worse still, it seems there is no one willing to fight back. Still, the people who are elected to represent us in our republic fail to do so. We all know it and we all sit in silent, angry consent. 

A republic cannot stand when it isn’t what it says to be. 

My god is me. It is you. It is us. It is all living things and what my country is under, is not that form of god but instead under the separateness and willing ignorance and complicit silence to all the things that go against the fabric of who we thought we were pledging to be. 

So I’m looking for liberty and justice for all. I’m looking to be a citizen of a country whose police protect its citizens, not kill them. A country  whose citizens do not speak up for their oppressors, condemning themselves in a wildly accepted conversation of lack of self-worth. 

I’m looking for a country whose spirit nurtures creative expression. Expression and oppression can’t knowingly exist in the same space. I know too much and am looking for the weirdoes who are just like me. 

I grew up, indoctrinated, in the belief that I must fight – and I believe this – to defend my opponent’s right to hurt themselves in their politics and their actions if that is their wish. But that no longer resonates in a society that says my freedom is not allowed to impede the freedom of others. 

The corroded collective self worth of America has spread like a virus. It impedes on my freedom. I am looking for a place where my American ideals can flourish when the place they were born has been relegated to their ruin. 

I am looking for my tribe. 

#2 Self

The truth is I am looking for myself. I am looking for a place where I can be, whoever that may be. 

To get there, to perform the journey I will have to be different from who I am today. 

I will have to transform. 

I will have to be bold in my thoughts and deeds. I will have to grasp the abandoned dagger of courage and belief in something greater that wrote my ideals and I will have to embody them.

I will have to learn a new language. I will have to be humble, open, and accepting of a truth other than what I have known. I will have to commit to becoming an artist. I will have to learn new methods of expressing and sharing my art with only my innate gifts and an untamed refusal to quit in the face of adversity in my arsenal. 

To get there, I will get to become a better man.  The process requires finding and becoming my Self. 

#3 This ain’t no time for bullshit 

I believe life was meant to be lived. Fully. Passionately. Without regrets or excuses. I want a life whose path’s footsteps are worthy of inspiration. I want a life I can be proud of, inspired by, marveled by. And if by some mysterious miracle of unfolding of events, others are inspired by what I am about to do, great, good for you, sprinkle that shit everywhere. 

#4 Love

About 8 years ago I got a passport in the process of traveling overseas. My destination had been, yup, Germany. I don’t know why I picked Germany. I believe it’s a sign.  I never made it then but I’m making it now. The time is now.  

I am not alone in this journey. I am going with love and I know a world of love will unfold there. I just know it, I feel it. I trust it.