What happens when our personal vision and our personal values are challenged by the environment which we live in?

I’ve been doing quite a bit of thinking about my personal vision.  What is it that I want to hold for my future, and the future I want to see for the communities I live in? What are the values that align me with my community?

Some of this has been severely challenged of late by the ludicrous new refugee policies that our national government has instigated in the last few weeks.  What an abomination. 

How can this be democracy at work? This is so far from my vision, so far from my personal values and yet from the outside because I live in this country, I having to suck it up.

I don’t want to suck it up.  I grieve for those people who are stuck between a rock and a hard place in their lives, so much that the best choice for them is to get on a leaky boat and traverse the very high seas – with their children! - and then to be 'settled'(?) in some overcrowed tin shed 'camp'(?) So much blame has been laid at the feet of the ‘people smugglers’.  Perhaps putting them out of business by actually coming to the aid of their clients would be a better alternative…surely.  Or even, radical thought, assist them in their business, so everybody stays safe!?

I want to align to a community that holds every life dear.  I want to find a way that everybody has a voice, that everybody has a platform for that voice to be heard and expressed. Big or small, local or global, everybody has the right to find their community and their platform.

 No doubt I’m very idealistic, and I love that about myself!  I hold to a vision that there is a better way and that we, as a community, will find it.

(image Simon Tiller)

I chose to use poison in the garden today.  To get at that rotten grass that has roots that go all the way to China and cuts through garden gloves if you try to pull it out.  I thought I would blast it – the technology was there right in my shed.  So blast it I did…and then I got to feeling guilty and thinking. 

So what of my inner weeds.  Should I blast them, or pull them out and risk getting hurt.  Should I let them grow and overtake me and my vitality; let them hold me back, tie me down.    Most often there is the temptation to lock the inner weeds away in the basement and throw away the key.  But that’s the thing with weeds, they thrive in the dark and they have a sneaky way of coming to the surface when you least expect it.  From their dark home they go on influencing…and growing.

I decided the metaphorical poison I use for my inner weeds is presencing, by that I mean coming right into the present moment and seeing what’s really there. The inner weeds took root sometime in the past.  Somewhere in the past I started to believe things like “I am not good enough” or “It is all my fault” and those weeds took hold and I fed them with my belief.  They thrive on belief you know. 

The key is composting .  From the present moment I can make a choice to compost those weeds.  Bringing them out into the light helps first.  Naming them and owning them and making a choice to add them to the compost so they “fertilise the future” as my friend Amanda Fleming would say.  This is the technology in our tool shed. Like Tinkerbell – we need to believe in fairies to make them real.  It takes perseverance, honesty and willingness and often this can feel like hard work. It was a powerful realisation – the garden will be pleased.  I’ve decided to put the work in rather than use poison the next time.

The news of the week is mixed.  One the one hand the UK passes marriage equality – waiting to be signed off by the Queen no less!  So there is hope in the world, all Queens of the UK will be pleased!  On the other hand Russia goes completely the other direction and imposes a $3,000 fine on people advocating for gay and lesbian rights – any kind of rights – and bans adoption by gay couples? What the..?  Europe is polarised over the issue – apart from our friends in the Netherlands and Belgium of course, and now after much drama and sometimes violent protests – France.

So here we sit down south, the so-called lucky country? Free thinking, free enterprising? Yet, 22 million of us and I am still a second rate citizen in my own country.  The lucky country, the land where our politicians play politics and sit on their hands over real issues like recognising our first peoples in our constitution and letting my family be recognised as a family – for real.  A number of years ago now, my family jumped through hoops of fire and red tape to get my partner legally able to sign our sons forms at school, or at the doctor.  She could not adopt our son, as that would mean that I had to give up ALL parental rights.  She became a legal guardian however and has been able to sign – thanks to some wonderful help and navigation from a lawyer friend!

What a different world our son would’ve been born into if we had been able to marry and our relationship given rights. Or not to marry but for our relationship to be recognised.  Our choice, not theirs.

What a weird world we live in that is so polarised over such an issue of basic human rights.  I struggle to understand why I still have to write about this!

Speaking up is the only way.  The power of social media was shown this week when the wonderful Amanda Palmer wrote a retort to misogynistic Daily Mail after a gig in Glastonbury.  So speaking up I will continue to do…. You bet!

I was watching crap tele last night.  My own fault that I happened across an article about betting on the royal baby.  We’ve all been involved in running a book on a baby – well I know that I have, plenty of times.  Sex, time, date, weight.  I even won one once.  Thought I was psychic.

I have never seen such rubbish as the amount of bets people are actually putting hard earned – or easy earned or just earned – cash on the impending royal baby.

So people are betting up to 10,000 pounds on the sex of the baby, or the name of the bundle.  What a grand investment!  And bookies have taken literally millions of dollars worth of bets, and this in a country that is struggling?

It gets really weird from there. Apparently I could also put $10 on what the baby’s first boyfriend or girlfriend’s name will be!  OK so that is really a long term investment.  The hopeful blood lines have gone crazy.

I wonder what drives people to bet on such ludicrous things?  I don’t believe it’s a drive for riches.  A belief like lotto, or casino gambling; that here is my chance to change my life because I know that the baby is going to be a red haired girl, 5 foot 5 inches, who has braces at aged 13 and has her first kiss at aged 15 photographed by many paparazzi. No, hardly going to bring riches.

Perhaps it’s something about wanting to be a part of something special, lovely and beautiful…but my niece just had a baby and that was majorly wonderful, yet no one wanted to run a book on that.

Or perhaps it’s something that drives us to want to be a part of the beautiful people. The whole celebrity game, that lusts after someone else’s life because we are all so damn unhappy with our own lot.  Putting our dollar and pounds on their lives makes us feel part of the whole thing.  We can tell our grandchildren, I knew!  I knew it would be a girl, a brunette, bring no good.  We can feel like we matter.  That we minions have a voice and we care.

The one sure thing is that once this babe is born, my life will not change one iota, and it’s a pretty good bet that the only life that will change are the actual parents….beautiful people or not. My bet is on it bringing them much joy and happiness.

I’ve been way distracted by the goings on in Australian politics.  So distracted that all I have done is write to politicians to express my horror, amazement and utter annoyance at the crazy waste of time and space  that are our leaders are using up.  To be honest, I don’t actually believe any of our current politicians display anything that remotely even scrapes the surface of leadership. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place.  Labour and Liberals – not sure which is which. 

Yes we live in a world of duality.  Right, wrong; man, woman; big, small; right and left?.  It amazes me that not more of us walk around with a split personality.  Centuries of this kind of thinking have conditioned us all to be split down the middle.  To have strong opinions and unchangeable stances on one side or the other.

Where is the leader that can hold their centre.  Not the centre politically speaking, and not a mamby pamby hold no opinion, or wait for what the polls say excuse for a leader.  Not someone who wants to react to a yes with an immediate no.  Not someone who doesn’t take any time to see, but judges on first look. Where is the someone who can hold a neutral space?.  Someone who is lead by their value system which is a value system that values the all.?  That takes time and has the ability to truly listen.?  Who goes for the win win.?  Who leads from the heart.?

OK – so obviously I have way too high a standards?   But hey, I am living in this world after all.  Can I have a say please?