2020 Year of Clarity

photo by Babbie Earle

As a measure of vision, 20×20 implies perfect vision. Clarity. Wouldn’t it be nice if this year, being 2020, we could achieve this! However, it is impossible to achieve clear vision when reality itself is deliberately made unclear. At this time, it appears that our leaders are happy to lie and embrace conspiracy theories in order to protect themselves and achieve their personal goals. This is an apolitical statement, but  I read that the president of the United States, our leader,  himself has lied over 14,000 times in office. Whether you love him or not, this is a staggering statistic. Formerly, just a few lies would be enough to cause public consternation. But now, daily lying and embracing of fantasies are de rigueur throughout the empire. We are even encouraged to view obvious facts, formerly known as the “truth”,  as “fake”. We now live in a world where many believe that truth is whatever serves your personal interest or your political beliefs. It’s become okay to lie and obfuscate. Apparently there is no longer any shame in this. Can this be the end game of a “me first”, self-serving, narcissistic culture? Have we considered the danger of losing touch with or denying reality?

This new mutable reality is not a 20×20 vision. It’s vision altered and obscured by personal desires.  Whether it be the quest for power or money or fame or simply the need to be right or denial of personal responsibility, public discourse has been distorted by its stain. No one can be sure about what the truth is anymore. It is easy to avoid personal responsibility when there is no metric for truth. Just change the truth to match your position or to cover your misdeeds; to create confusion, and to refocus blame onto others. Disharmony is the result, as well as divisiveness over fake issues; wasted energy. Imagine your personal life with this lens. How long can a marriage or a friendship be harmoniaus?

Because of all this lying, the nation as a whole is losing coherence, its central unifying spirit. Rather than the noble concept of accepting differences and diversity and living together in harmony, the current focus is on emphasizing differences and encouraging judgment and blame, causing separation, suspicion, and hate. History teaches us that lies have always been handy for this objective; for the appeal to fear in the quest for power.

Lost in the present emotional chaos being caused by this paradigm, no one seems to consider what the end result might be. However, this encouragement of separation is a major clue as to how the culture of deceit and kowtowing to conspiracy theories if continued, will end. Of course, liars and the creators of fake conspiracy theories don’t care what the results will be because their interest is simply in their own welfare and perhaps causing chaos as a diversion from their own actions and personal issues. If their lies harm others who cares? As long as they look good and their personal desires are met, the welfare of those harmed by their lies matters little. But, the end result of all this lying and obfuscation can only be confusion and chaos, not clarity because that is not the intent. And, as we struggle to find a center in our confusion, the facile appeal to judgment and blame becomes more attractive and more ubiquitous. As we take the hand of judgment and blame we abet the dissolution of a core spiritual truth, the truth which holds us together as a society, that we are all fundamentally alike and as  Buddhists say “we all have basic goodness”. Thus, the easy and lazy actions of judgment and blame and the beliefs they promulgate eat away at our humanity; our acceptance of outward differences in the knowledge of our fundamental sameness, a fundamental spiritual truth and the foundation of harmonious coexistence. We lose our connnection to compsssion.

Some of us, still ignorant and lost in the story of our personal, dysfunctional existence, will crave chaos and divisiveness as a way of feeling alive or important, a way to be seen. But, this year, 2020, let more conscious individuals resolve to be personally responsible by ignoring these voices. If you have trouble distinguishing what is true, versus what is appealing to fear or greed or separation, listen to your heart. How does the message feel in your heart? The heart knows what is true. Is there anger there? Is there an unsettling feeling or does a message bring more peace and harmony to you? Be objective!

It is up to us individually, taking personal responsibility, to strive for the truth. Let 2020 be the year of the return of 20×20 vision, to clarity, a return to facts and reality and heart-centered understanding so that we can all move forward together. We can agree to disagree as we maintain civility. As we listen to appeals for separation,  let’s remember what Rumi said of life in the shadow of death, “there is more to want here than fame, or fortune, or bites of roasted meat.” He is talking, of course, of love.