Bit of a Digression
"Wherever we go, we are friends" -Sloth and Manatee
Or: Secret Passageways
Hello,
Each day, millions upon gazillions of people get up, and go out, and do something to help, or to teach, or to learn, or to be there for others and for the Earth and everything on it and even the stuff beyond the Earth and everything on that. Every single day, and night, and again the next day, and the next, and the next.
They take on the care of another human or humans, or animals, or places or things, or just help somebody have a nicer day, or say a kind word, give a compliment, run international organizations that go around and feed people in disasters and crisis areas or participate on research teams learning about every species and phenomenon. And so many things in-between all of those.
This goes on everywhere, all the time. It is not on the teevee machine or the little screens. People are too busy doing the things. They are too busy digging the secret passageways to the future.
Even the animals, caring for young, building nests, digging holes, hunting, migrating, doing what they do. Also the trees, moving nutrients around, absorbing certain materials, releasing others. The oceans breathing in and out, breaking down the sand. Mycelial networks making their way under and through the soil and everything on the soil.
It is an immense world of secret passageways. Evading predators and destructive forces, all day every day. Making spaces nobody even knows about. Inventing new ways of getting around where there was nothing before.
The big predatory businesses of the world decided at some point that the only thing they intend to do is to grow, and to grow there has to be somewhere to grow into, and the somewhere has run out of land, and is now growing into the insides of heads, slurping up people’s attention and energy like feed stock, peddling artificial worlds and word-games dressed up as “intelligence.” It tries to drown out the countless people doing the things, doing the kindnesses and what needs done because it’s too hard to shrink-wrap that into a commodity.
I made a little sketch of two friends who haven’t seen each other in a while, in the tiny split second before they lay eyes on each other again.
We are all here, so many people are doing the things, busy, being kind, making something better for somebody, digging those secret passageways, but the noise businesses would have us instead only see what they can sell for cheap. That is how business is business-ed, but not how life is lived.
The builders and learners and helpers are often at the periphery of each other’s awareness, not centered, not a headline or a meme, just living and doing, trying to be kind, trying to make something better.
But this is the world. It does not require a camera or a music clip or a trending topic. It does not get “amplified.” It is not made of pixels or algorithms. It does not go viral.
I am happy you are here, and I look forward to going on together, deeply aware of the limitless stores of kindness and invention around us, seeking it out, making and remaking it, being people who care, and knowing this is the immensity of our world, this is going on twenty-four-seven, in every country and every city and wherever there is need.
Also here is a friendly whale.
Thank you for reading…
Okay! That's enough nonsense for now.
May you see a friend, may you receive a kindness, won't you be my neighbor? - Betsy
HELLO AND THANKS FOR READING!!
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