Now that my week of solidarity from writing is over, I’ve had plenty of time for reflection, especially upon this Russian/Ukrainian conflict. I was most hit hard during this reflection when I read about one Russian soldier’s dying text to his mother who told her he was afraid and was questioning why he was even in the war. Many polls overseas suggest similarly that plenty of the Russian population doesn’t support Putin’s war effort to recapture Ukraine. What I personally see in it all is a leader who’s more interested in garnering power than fostering peace amongst his people, and in the process, has created another global conflict, just as we begin to truly emerge from a deadly global pandemic.
My best friend Cedric always tells me we live in a fallen world and in fallen times and judging from the way people have treated each other ever since Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump went head-to-head, ever since Trump’s four years of presidency, and ever since the last two of years of COVID-19, I tend to agree with him now. So many seem to be consumed with their own needs, wants, and desires right now, than others.
Take for example the other day when my friend Tom was trying to merge into a line of slowly moving cars in a plaza we were leaving. A woman wouldn’t let him in and angrily laid upon her horn letting him know so, giving us a dirty look in the process. This is what I see around the hearts of most people right now and I too have been on the receiving end of this. Most don’t appear to want to hear about my message of fostering peace and unconditional love and I have begun to wonder if people are sick of hearing from me. Sadly though, the truth is that people really seem to be becoming more and more selfish in our world, thinking only of themselves and what they need for happiness, forgetting about all those around themselves who are suffering.
Of course, there are diamonds in the rough. People who continue to put themselves out there, in the line of fire, just to make a difference, just to bring greater Light onto our planet. Yet, they seem to be grossly overshadowed presently by all the constant acts of selfishness, including even on the global scale with someone thinking an invasion of another country, where thousands upon thousands of deaths of innocent people is the best course of action, when indeed such action is only going to drag much of our planet even further into a fallen world, into darkness.
To be perfectly honest, I’m weary of trying to be the good guy, of keeping my faith, of doing the best I can to bring my own Light into the world. Sometimes I fail miserably in the process, especially with my partner, especially when I come home and have been yelled at by one person after another in the places I speak at, or from text messages filled with judgments of what some think of me. Why people see me as a threat, and label me with the judgments they do, I don’t know. Maybe it’s just the darkness of this world trying to convince me to give up, on myself, on God, and on ever finding peace and joy within.
Frankly, it’s hard to find peace and joy within, as beyond the incredible pain I continue to live with, beyond the constant turmoil of Democrats versus Republicans, beyond the ongoing battles of vaccinated versus unvaccinated, and beyond all the opinions emerging now of Putin and his wartime efforts overseas, I find it rare to see people thinking of each other and doing their best to be there for each other. If we can’t even treat each other with the unconditional love and respect we would want for ourselves, we are only going to create more and more wars no different than what Putin is presently doing. All wars begin within an imbalance within, a conflict of ego, a battle of the mind. No war will never create any lasting peace and love. And neither will any act of selfishness. Our world will never change until all of us change ourselves and start being far nicer to each other than we are.
Nevertheless, I pray that somehow Putin and any other Russians supporting his war efforts will see how all of it is only going to bring about more pain, hardship, and loss, than any good. And hopefully one day, all of us will realize that the wars we keep creating, no matter small they are, always begin within ourselves and can only be resolved by working through it within ourselves and never by controlling someone else…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
