Britta Wolfert

Every End a New Beginning

Old patterns begin to give way to new ones. A painful ‘old’ year 2022 subsides. The new year will not miraculously and automatically bring out shiny change. We ourselves are responsible for bringing on that aspect. We can change the world by digging our awareness antennas out of the dust bin. Some of us are already on high alert due to childhood experiences, observations and teachings. Especially those of us who traded our birth country for another place to live out our lives, for various reasons. 
 

Awareness stings, bites, barks, yells, moans painfully as we see indifference walk  streets, drive highways, sit on couches. Not-awareness screams up the walls of cookie cutter houses, strolls the malls, trades plastic money for plastic materialism, drags it home, where, surrounded by electronics, over packaged snacks and stale comfort, artificiality fogs all human instinct, intuition and natural feel of what’s actually going on.  

Scrabble words are being casually googled, dulling the forehead and shrinking the mind even further yet. People enthusiastically gather toys made in China, soothe their collective guilt, piling the plastic into celebratory school busses to be delivered to children damaged by the very society we allow to foster, fester, growing like mould on a loaf of bread. The day after Christmas (what does it even mean anyways) those children, if they even played once with those plastic toys, toss them out the window, forgotten and hated. All they need its love.

Food Banks are swarming with guilty souls, serving turkey dinners to those who are unable to help themselves, those who never learned or wanted to learn how to fit into a self destructive society. Wedged between concrete walls in grey boxes, people endure yet another sun rise behind closed curtains, wondering where the next bread crumb comes from while CEOs  rake in billions.  

‘Good Food’ baskets delivered by guilty souls sit in messy places on floors right where they were delivered, untouched for weeks, if not months, until cockroaches and mice discover them. If you were never taught what ‘Good Food’ is and why, how to prepare it, how to even take care of yourself let alone the children you bring into the world ~ how the hell will a ‘Good Food’ basket do anything for you.  

Every change begins with awareness.  

We have the ability to bring on change needed to stop destructive imbalances in our society: 

~ Replacing Canada's arcaic 'First Past The Post' electoral system with the 'Proportional Representational' electoral system.

~ Providing a Universal Basic Income for all.

~ Taxing The Rich, Powerful, Unsustaining Oil & Gas Industries.

~ Providing helpless people in society the tools to help themselves.

~ Giving Natural Environments such as forests, rivers and bogs legal personhood status such as was attained for the Magpie River in Quebec:

https://globalnews.ca/news/8230677/river-quebec-legal-person/

‘Not voting’ is a lame way out and will back fire in the long run. We must firstly become aware of the imbalances in society. In our own back yard, our own province, our own country, we are only as useful as our awareness. When we step back for a nano second and examine ourselves, mentally remove ourselves from the world we live in, observing the situation from a imaginary cloud above ~ after a while we see clearly what is terribly wrong. At that time, we must take note and begin change, one baby step at a time. 

Q: What can we do?

Easy.

A: Sign Petitions. 

Sign up for reputable petition organization mailing lists. Learn about the latest issues Canadians need to know about and act. It only takes a minute of our day and signing a petition really can make a difference. Check out:

https://www.leadnow.ca/ 

https://stand.earth/

B: Ditch the main stream and try REAL news, for example:

https://thenarwhal.ca/

https://thetyee.ca/

Let's just recognize we are have now reached societal, industrial and environmental dead end, the ultimate impasse.

Let's recognize that change is needed. And we need to roll up our sleeves to bring on positive change.

"We must become the change we want to see in the world" - Mahatma Ghandi

Inspiring bonus track for you, from my Moonstone album below.

Odd as it may sound, the whole idea of a music career dream began crumbling in August of 2015. I had just immersed myself into the making of my second album still unnamed at the time when the news hit me that my father was gravely ill and that I was needed. Now. In panicky empath mode, I dropped everything, booked the next possible flight, hastily grabbed a few belongings and was on my way. I had no idea how the following turn of events would change my life forever. 

At a time of turmoil during the Syrian refugee crisis, there was no escaping the seriousness and urgency unfolding. With doors wide open and women and men from my generation passionately and warmly setting up sleeping quarters and clothing donation centers in school gymnasiums, abandoned factory halls and train stations, selfless deeds sprouted everywhere, nobody worrying about future concerns but dealing with the crisis in an organized and purposeful manner. During the winter there were tents set up near Hamburg Hauptbahnhof, big cooking ovens set up and soup being dished out from ginormous, steaming pots. Likewise refugees lived in tents around the train station while residents went on with their daily work, hasting by, giving out spare change or other items along the way. TBC.

Borrowed.

Everything on Earth is Borrowed. 

Once we begin to apprehend the understanding that our stay on this planet is meaningless unless we tread lightly, share with others and behave humbly, the thirst for material goods and fame will wane and we will find compassion for those who need a lift.

Only when we have travelled, lived and worked outside the walls of the safety and comfort our birth community provides; when we have seen and learned from Weisheit and knowledge long established in other communities, we can come back and not merely become kings of the castle but stand as humble leaders capable of welcoming, nurturing and encouraging newcomers to our community. Newcomers such as immigrants, refugees and anyone  who wants to live in and contribute positively to our place, bringing with them the very spirit, fresh ideas and goods necessary for eye opening city improvements.

All too often local politicians, business owners, even university faculty and other public agencies bank on the strong support of their own kin. They stock their surrounding job positions with yes-sayers. That fiercely protected environment eventually suffocates in their own ideas of greatness, while new ideas and people are being blocked off and turned away. That makes for a system which eventually can no longer function, which chases its tail and eventually collapses.