“spirtually and passionately alive”
I call her La Cebollita because, well, that’s what she calls herself.
She sent the following to me in response to my post about the Pterodactyl:
I’m reading about the Pterodactyl and the Embracer, and I’m remembering how odd I sometimes feel around desensitized people, how disorienting their adaptation to ugliness is. I’m amazed at how easily they may insist that, because I have a healthy response to violence and other ugliness–that it is to be avoided and prevented, that it makes me sad and sometimes fiercely angry–so I am the one who is broken.
I know that this desensitization, it is what people do to survive in a violent world, I watch the men in my life pursue it like their very lives depend on it. And yet, they try to maintain their core humanity; they deeply value that which is creative rather than destructive.
As for myself, knowing as I have the personal face of violence, I’ve learned, mostly, to discern between my own fear, that which is both personal and personally archetypal, and my sense of outrage at what is destructive and wrong. It has taken a lot of work and has been deliberate.
Maybe you are looking after the survival of your own humanity, and that of others. Its difficult to protect oneself, one’s psyche and one’s humanity all at the same time. Yet, I think this is the definition of an ethical being.
And so, sending love–
I first read her email yesterday morning.
Now, I’d like to share an email I wrote to my dad on April, 15th… just before I started writing about… the ‘stranger things.’
Dad, I’m not being elusive… I’m being totally straight. I’m playing things as I go… seeing where life takes me. Following my heart. Beyond that… I don’t really have any real answers right now.
I apologize I can’t tell you anything more than: “I don’t really know… but I’m extremely happy knowing that I’m on my own personal pilgrimage to find out.”
If you think I’m wandering aimlessly, I’m not. I’m very dedicated to life leading me to something I feel is very big and very important… for me at least. It’s not wandering… it’s a personal pilgrimage. That’s the most I know. That’s the most I can tell you.
I’d also like to share what I’ve been sending out as a cover letter to whenever approaching new clients – clients involved in service:
The pangs started early, in the innocence of my budding youth. My own memories reach as far back as kindergarten. I clearly remember how poignantly the Feed the Children commercials upset me. At that fledgling age, I couldn’t stomach the mass illness, poverty and starvation those commercials asserted. Just one clip of those ads would incite me into melancholic begging. “We must adopt a child,” I would plead with my mom. “We must feed the hungry children.”
Nearly twenty years later, my sensitivity toward global injustice – be it social, humanitarian, environmental, criminal or cultural – is yet more poignant. It’s time to act. Like Halogen, I too want to empower a global audience “to make positive changes in the world around them.”
An innumerable amount of articles, photos, interviews and films covering global aid and related issues have deeply resonated within me, but one article in the January 2007 issue of Popular Photography says it most explicitly: Saving the World One Photo at a Time by Jay Mallin. In the article he writes:
“It can be a pretty decent hobby and a reasonably rewarding career. But photography has a remarkable ability to be more than that – to be a force that moves people.”
To be a force that moves people. That is not just what I aspire to be, but what I am determined to be… through Social Media. I am determined to echo the momentous influence of those distinguished photographers that Mallin refers to in his article throughout the current digital age. Photographers like William Henry Jackson whose landscapes Mallin highlights as helping “spark the creation of the world’s first national park, Yellowstone.” I want to have such a sustainable impact – and I want that impact to directly affect the social needs of the world today.
Then, today, the book I’m reading – Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior – puts everything that has been locked within my heart since as long as I can remember into clear, unmistakable words:
“A third and final rescue mission was sent. These very special souls were the most courageous of all – the peaceful warrior souls – because they knew they weren’t coming back; they knew they would be destined to live within a mortal body for aeons – suffering, losing loved ones, in mortal pain and fear, until all souls were free…
They were a volunteer mission. And they came to remind all others who they are. They include carpenters, students, doctors, artists, athletes, musicians and ne’er-do-wells – geniuses and madmen, criminals and saints. Most have forgotten their mission, but an ember still glows within the hearts and memories of those who are destined to awaken to their heritage as the servants of humanity, and to awaken others.
These rescuers are not “better” souls, unless love makes them so. They may be lost, or found. But they are awakening, now. Hundreds of thousands of souls on the planet – becoming a spiritual family.”
I claim this. I am one of them. This is why I’m here.
“There are many others,” she continued, “hundreds of thousands, scattered across the planet – who feel a call to serve; who know deep inside that they are here to do something, but cannot quite articulate what that something might be. More coming in all the time, many of our children, searching to find out who they are and what they are here to do. All have in common a certain restlessness – a deep sense of being somehow different, of being oddballs, visitors here, never quite fitting in. We feel at times a longing to ‘go home,’ but we’re not exactly sure where that is. We often have giving, but rather insecure natures.
Well, we are not here to ‘fit in,’ as much as we might like to. We are here to teach, to lead, to heal, to remind others, if only by our example.
The earth has been the school for most human souls, but our souls are not yet completely of this earth. We have been schooled elsewhere; there are things we just know without knowing how we know – things we recognize, as if this is a refresher course, and we are most definitely here on a service mission.”
This must be why I absolutely love the song ‘New Soul’ by Yael Naim:
I’m a new soul
I came to this strange world
Hoping I could learn a bit bout how to give and take.
But since I came here,
Felt the joy and the fear
Finding myself making every possible mistake
la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la…
I’m a young soul
In this very strange world
Hoping I could learn a bit bout what is true and fake
But why all this hate?
Try to communicate
Finding trust and love is not always easy to make
la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la…
This is a happy end
‘Cause you don’t understand
Everything you have done
Why’s everything so wrong?
This is a happy end
Come and give me your hand
I’ll take you far away
I’m a new soul
I came to this strange world
Hoping I could learn a bit bout how to give and take.
But since I came here,
Felt the joy and the fear
Finding myself making every possible mistake
I’m a new soul… (la, la, la, la,…)
In this very strange world…
Every possible mistake
Possible mistake
Every possible mistake
Mistakes, mistakes, mistakes…
Take take take take take… take a mistake
Take, take a mistake
Take, take a mistake
(oh oh oh oh…)
[fade out]
(oh oh oh oh…)
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How joyous it is to read your own thoughts in print from decades, centuries, eons past!
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