Tag: global

The Mist

In the Percy Jackson book series (by Rick Riordan and which I have been reading alongside my daughter) the mortals can’t see all the crazy that happens with the gods, demigods and monsters because of a hazy mist.

The mist distorts their perception of events so that they can remain within their comfortable concept of reality.  Yet again truth seeming stranger than fiction, or perhaps just parallel, when I draw the comparison of this to our current global situation.

Occasionally, in the story, there are a few rare mortals who can look through the screen and are able to see the alternate timeline that is defining the events; indeed one could name it ‘the truth’.

Is that where we are at now in society? Is there a mist that is filtering reality into a more comfortable perception? Is it easier to see that the governments across the world are just bumbling inadequates that aren’t handling a pandemic well than wonder why, with all our expertise in so many fields, this has been mishandled so atrociously? Is it easier to think that there is a deadly virus that is beyond our body’s natural ability to handle than to take true personal responsibility for our well being? Is it easier to defame all uncomfortable opinions as ‘far right’ so that child trafficking and forced medical procedures are just manipulative propaganda rather than horrific realities that need addressing stat?

Is there really such a mist? Am I, and my tribe, blessed or cursed with the gift to see through it? Or are we the one who’s vision is filtered through a smoke screen?

I can only speak for what feels true to me and, without an element of boast, I believe I have a natural truth detector that beeps loudly. It’s not that I always know what the truth is but I generally have a fair sense of when I’m being lied to. I have many classic and retrospectively amusing examples of catching out rogue boyfriends with this inbuilt signal! (For another blog perhaps.) AND mixed in with that is a desire to always feel and believe the best in people, so it’s not as if I’ve never been deceived, but in hindsight my detector has always beeped, though I may have silenced it for the desire to believe in a brighter vision.

My lie detector started sounding in January, at the very beginning of this particular pandemic story. It was actually quite hard to justify my opinion at that point as it was predominantly intuitive, nobody had any real facts, but it was as if I was seeing through the mist with absolute clarity. Ever since, that initial vision has only been confirmed on a daily and monthly basis, I knew CV was not a virus to be afraid of. What I didn’t know was why it was being used to frighten us into submission.

I still don’t have a clear answer to that but I do feel that more layers are being peeled back and more mist is dissolving at a rate of knots. I see that the power lies beyond the puppetry of the governments and in the hands of some disturbed but powerful humans. I can see sociopathy and psychopathy on a far grander scale than I ever believed possible, though with my understanding of early years parenting, I sadly recognise how easily and naively this has been created.

But I think my biggest frustration has to be this god damn mist. How is it that so many are continuing in a narrative that denies these truths? That can swap deaths for cases and continue to drown in fear; controlled, submissive and accepting. Human rights abuses, emergency laws permitted, freedoms stripped, truths censored. Mist. Mist. Mist.

But I will take hope from the tales of Percy Jackson, where is is the few that can truly see that conquer the monsters, despite the general population not even recognising the danger they are in.

To triumph over evil takes a steadfast belief in truth, love and faith and that magical ability to see beyond the intoxicating mist of lies. And there are enough of us that can hold all of that and more as we rise to the challenge of today.

The Other Voice

When my son was two, he was hit in the face by a beach swing in Thailand and lifted clean off the ground, resulting in a deep (though thankfully small) cut just underneath his right eye. Armed with steri-strips, cleansing alcohol and Arnica, I cleaned him up, stuck him back together and smothered him with kisses, cuddles and boob!

Even with all my loving care he still looked like he’d been 10 rounds in a MMA ring and of course garnered lots of sympathy and questions from all sorts of strangers.

One Thai man came up super close to me, whilst I was carrying my son, touched his face and said something along the lines of: ‘You are very lucky, he could be blind, you need to be more careful, so close to his eye, he could have lost his eye….’  Well, you can imagine!

This was nearly five years ago and yet what that man said came to me just last week in a moment of clarity and understanding. I replayed it in my head and a monumental epiphany smacked me hard in the solar plexus.

This man was MY other voice.

The tsunami of ‘other’ voices swiftly followed; memories, reactions, hurtful & potent words or comments. All those people I have met so far along my path, whose words felt tough to integrate (good & bad), they were all just different parts of my consciousness being expressed to me loud and clear.

When that Thai man spoke to me that day, my reaction was defence. I smiled, nodded and moved quickly away; I didn’t want to hear and more importantly I didn’t want to consider that possibility that we just so nearly missed. But he was expressing my deepest fears, he was mirroring back to me the heart-stopping moment when I saw my son’s injury and all that could have been. By rejecting it, it has slept silently in the recesses of my mind to pop up now and again in moments of anxiety or fretfulness.

Now I can look at it from another angle; I can embrace it, acknowledge it, own it.

And with that comes the potential to own all of what triggers me in another’s reaction to me. When I rail against, I am only fighting myself. We are all one consciousness; one global thought with layers upon layers of truths and lies and hopes and fears.

With that solar plexus punch I realised how deeply we are all truly connected. ‘We Are One’ is not trite patter but rich and nuanced and soulful.

Imagine if each and every time we felt that defence or trigger in hearing another perspective, we reached inside and owned it as a part of us. We do not have to live it, act it or be it, but simply acknowledge that within us all we hold the infinite potentials, the full spectrum of human nature. Within us is the possibility of our worst and best selves, by embodying that we get to choose which ones to be.