An Adventure without Blinders

I went off Island yesterday to see Ani Difranco at the Mount Baker Theater. She is even more phenomenal than I remember- incredibly talented, adorable, funny, moving, and awe inspiring. It was a smooth adventure with no real hitches or unfortunate events. It was good to get away from this tiny Island and experience the outer world which is large, enthralling, there is space for anonymity, as well as the eye opening reality check of the world and its lost people just looking for something, and settling for any distraction they can lay their hands on.

There was the homeless man pushing his cart across the crosswalk in front of the beautifully built Whatcom community college, the homeless straggling junkie slipping into the Quality Inn for a free breakfast, the stragglers with empty stares and hearts outside of the Horseshoe Diner, and the endless people just driving past each other in cars, disconnected by double yellow lines and zooming steel; unable to make a connection.

Yet I appreciated many things. Sitting in the Library, a conversation with a sweet woman named Abbey outside of the Mt. Baker Theater, experiencing Ani in the artful theater surrounded in a dark room full of strangers and endless possibilities, good food and good service, and I even enjoyed the awakening moments of observing destitution because it does exist and it is out there.

I believe that all of us successful and healthy individuals that are doing slightly more than making it can be guilty of receding to our worlds of familiarity and comfort. That we assume the rest of the world is like us, because that is with whom we sit, converse, pay attention to and work with. Perhaps living on Lopez Island where people are comfortable, wealthy, healthy and beautiful, my blinders are ever so lifted when I am submerged in a world where you can’t avoid observing suffering. When we live in that world all the time, do we see it? Do we think about it, try to change it, in the direct way that lies before our very eyes? I know many people try to raise their inner consciousness through yoga or meditation, volunteer to help kids in schools, or donate to the Sierra Club or Amnesty International. I believe we are very aware the world is suffering, and that we are losing people as more and more of our youth and elderly fall through the cracks and become misplaced. I am just saying today, in the spirit of living in the moment, lift your blinders and your immunities to those who are struggling that you see before you in the world every day, and just see them, observe. I can’t imagine anything more painful when you are lost than to become increasingly invisible as well.