everything in the world is changing so you might as well find your light
enough with the despair, you’re stronger than that.
originally published on substack 03 june 2025
from a roll of film
Anxiety, depression, anger, aggression, despondency, and disillusionment are all far more commonplace these days than anyone would like. Folks are identifying more and more with the misery of the world, all the while serving up our power on a gilded platter to those who only degrade our light. The leaders of the old ways can only survive on the rations of our souls we decide to feed them, and we’ve been doing so with remarkable willingness.
So many have agreed with their view, unquestioningly allowing their vicious arrangement of how life “is” meanwhile seeing any other perspectives or possibilities with a patronizing lens. “This is just how things are,” we’ve been coerced into accepting. But that all relies on us forgetting an important thing: we are the ones who decide what life is and how we wish to live it.
That’s not to say that circumstances happening on a global scale are the fault of those most impacted. Certainly it is the continued collective agreement to uphold this dying social order along with the ravages of capitalism and imperialism on our hearts and this world. What it is to say, is that every single person regardless of circumstance has the right to decide how they navigate their lives.
Even in the midst of grotesque brutality, there are those who still make offerings to life and give love.
Even in the midst of safety, wealth, and freedom of movement there are those who find only the worst of things and give only fear and despair.
It’s always a choice. We have been reminded of this by many teachers, healers, advocates, leaders, and quite likely by our own inner voice. Yet there is immense resistance in returning to love. Love has been given a label of naiveté. Has been called soft, silly, unrealistic. But is it not the boldest, most brave, most honorable thing you can do to still be loving, open, innerstanding, soft even in the face of a world that wishes to calcify you at every turn?
Is it not courageous to maintain a vision of a gentler world? To turn away from the old investment in fear and give ourselves the freedom to not only believe in, but to build ourselves into the ones that live in this Earth of gentler possibilities?
I often find it’s the folks most dismissive of the power of love that are most frightened, most attuned to entrapment, most unwilling to face the truth of their heart, their choices, and the own hell they create for themselves everyday.
The ones who attempt to beat down those who harness hope and invest in possibility are the ones who beat their own selves down far more brutally every day.
If you aren’t harming yourself, if you aren’t in a hell of your own making, if you aren’t playing along with the things you’ve been forced into believing then you certainly aren’t interested in trying to diminish the light in anyone else.
Besides, in a world order that is as cruel and nonsensical as the one we have been living in, why not just be delulu? Why not just decide to believe in the goodness of the world, of the people around you, of the things that we can build together?
We in the “west” live in a society of daily violence, where safety is only “guaranteed” by following the leader and not believing that everyone deserves the basic necessities of life simply by being alive. It is truly the most nonsensical and barbaric social structure, one that we have been trained over generations to see as the only way.
But the only way is one where people can barely survive?? Where to be seen as useful to society you must work yourself ill (with no guarantee of healthcare), climb upon the backs of your brethren, and beat down everyone (yourself included) in order to succeed? In a universe as truly vast and infinite as ours, why would I ever continue to believe that this brutality is “the only way?”
I WOULD MUCH RATHER BE “DELUSIONAL” than to keep following the death march of capitalism. I would much rather free myself through sustained and continued inner work so that I can allow myself the freedom to dream, to see other possibilities, and to let my light shine unabashedly.
The universe is infinite after all, so I’m just gonna keep choosing to be in that world where things change for the better, where we allow ourselves to broaden, to become part of the greater story of creation. I’m gonna keep making my own heaven even in the midst of other people’s hell because that is my gift, my chance, and my offering to this world.
If it is all changing and global orders are rearranging, why not decide to see the best and invest in it every day you’re alive?
It is essential to remember as long as we are conscious we are always investing in something—whether it’s hope or fear, possibility or despair—so be sure you are actually devoting yourself to the life, the society, the heart, and the world you truly desire.
