What should matter?

Our health is directly related to the healthy environment we live in.

Lives, both visible and invisible, signal their presence, with rustles, screeches, scurrying, pecking, while we walk about in meditation, marveling at the different shades of green we never knew existed, and thousands of intricacies revealing in front of us.

This is not a fearful place anymore. This is a healing place; a place that lets us breath fresh air, calms our nerves, relaxes your stand. And when we hear or see an animal in a distressed mode, we feel compelled to stop, attend to it, look for ways to heal and remedy the situation, and might even take the step of removing that being to a place where it has a chance of life.

This has always been our habitat. That hurt animal, that could have been us, we think.

Something about our shared experience is still remembered, how we camouflaged  for millenia, first with covers made from skins of others, with paste and juices and mud and feathers so not to stand out as you do today in your red poncho. For millenia we learned  to blend in in this habitat that might recognize us as prey, skin and bone, but prey never the less.

That was our inheritance, our gene pool, our destiny. No birth control needed if in our entire lives our coital adventures ended up with just a few gestation events, and only one offspring ended up growing to maturity when by chance, among friendly tribes, someone else took turns watching the child at night while you dozed off.

How did we develop our intelligence and not our empathy? How did we learn to solve problems like building solid shelters, design clothing that protect us from all weather, build devices that can help us communicate our status to the world as this very computer I'm writing on, and still feel as though what matters is to take care of number one?  Even when we were prey on a regular basis, we took care of our tribe, we looked out for the benefit of everyone involved, and made room at our table for the stranger passing by. None of our discoveries or inventions would have occurred without global communication and assistance.

Did we miss an evolutionary cycle?
Are we still fighting our deepest fears in the deep recesses of our memory?

As elders of our tribe, we need to speak out for those whose voice might be silenced, and speak truth to power at all times. After all, we have the biggest memories; we have the deepest responsibilities to leave the world better than we found it.

Yes, indeed, Black Lives Matter.
Yes, indeed, where there is callousness and discrimination, and violence, we are sowing seeds of our own destruction.