Human Beans In Pale Green Pants

We humans are strange creatures.  As Caroline Myss says, we are so fearful. Afraid to die. Afraid to live.  So true. Yet, at the same time, these words are an invitation to wake up. A prod for us to examine what is this thing we call fear. What are we really afraid of? Seems to me it is either the unknown or something known that we have allowed our mind to exaggerate bigger then life. 

 Dr Seuss ~ What Was I Scared Of?

We also live in times where leaders of countries and religions manipulate and restrict the freedom of its own people with a media massaged message of terror from beyond its borders or with a prescribed morality. Can we stand up to these contrived or hyped up threats with a response of courage? Show us these boogie monsters.  Prove to us how someone else’s life style or belief system is a threat. Show us our differences. We can show you our commonalities.

Fear feeds our greed, our inhumanity, our disregard or blatant contempt for those we label “other”.  Fear is a shadow that when exposed to the light of consciousness shrivels and dies.

Fear itself is not an enemy, it can help us move wisely where caution is indicated.  Fear of known dangers is also a healthy, life preserving response.  Fear that goes unchallenged, unquestioned is an evolutionary throwback, the instinctive response of flight, fight or freeze. 

However, when fight and fear become companions, when we strike before looking closer, our actions create the fear response in others.  A fear that feeds a vicious never ending loop of no resolve. If we do not investigate our irrational responses to fear it may lead to us as has-beens.  

In Dr Seuss’ story “What Was I Scared Of?” the fear is over a pair of pale green pants with no one inside them. The narrator admits, "I do not fear those pants with nobody inside them." I said, and said, and said those words. I said them but I lied them.”  

Resolve comes when, 

“Then a strange thing happened.
 Why, those pants began to cry!
Those pants began to tremble.
They were just as sacred as I!

I never heard such whimpering
 And I began to see 

That I was just as strange to them
As they were strange to me!” 

It may indeed be that our ways are strange to one another. But strangeness only needs a closer look to lead to understanding, to curiosity, to interest, to awe in our unique expressions of humanness. Let us examine that which we so fear through the heart of compassion, the eyes of wisdom, the knowing that we are not separate. We are one planet. Many human beans; one being. Whole-in-one.