It is said that the character in Chinese for chaos is the same as for opportunity. As I went out to confirm that today—to try to spin down my anxiety, and lay on the love—I discover that Wikipedia has nice long entry debunking the fine points, pointing up the political use of this symbol. At the end of the article there is a cogent note from the 10th Edition of Xinhua Zidian, the best-selling Chinese dictionary considered authoritative in China, the character 机/機 (jī) has multiple meanings[11]:
• Meaning 1. "a point where things happen, change", examples: 危机 (wēijī), [...]
Derivative Meaning 1.1. "an event that has a confidential nature", examples: [...]
Derivative Meaning 1.2. "chance (opportunity), good timing", examples: [...]
This is where we are…a point where things happen/change and the opportunity for us to embrace that change by looking for the opportunities, personally, professionally, spiritually. We are at a spot that all the work, the saving, the scrimping and planning—has manifested itself in a stall or a break. We are at a spot where the life we had at Christmas is not the life we will ever have again. For good or for bad, it is just not going to be the same. I know, I know—to manifest change in business and in our lives formerly—Rob and I would often talk about the only way to start a train is to jerk it into action…and we learned methods and thinking to jerk those problems/projects into active things to solve. But this. This is far more that that.
The world as we know it. The structures we know. Those “solid” places we felt sure would never fail us…and they have. Our collective physical health is challenged. Death and dying for all is on the table. Our financial health—our years of saving and collecting has, in less than 3 days been decimated. Jobs, professions, and ways of staying afloat have been curtailed. And the little people are spinning in a chaotic oblivion with no end to the bottom, no deadline on when it will be over and our lives reduced to being at home, online and confined to flatten the curve to permit our hospitals to not overload.
It’s us versus them time. Us being “the people” and them being the government. We have the President spewing the continual lies he has been spinning for almost 4 years now on a vertical line…with more idiotic pronouncements from medication to telling the governors that there is no federal help for masks and gowns for hospital workers. We have Republicans going on long weekend and denying this crisis was not weeks away but NOW. We have state messaging television telling lies to people—and those people so unquestioningly believing all the lies and untruths that we are in a place that may be beyond the point of return. That same media, President and Congress will be forced to go through this as well—and will never, in the narcissistic cult that they embrace, acknowledge how the system failed due to stupidity, carelessness, cavalier firing of qualified individuals, selfish self dealing. As they said on one article I read, all the red lights were blinking that this was going to happen and it was ignored. Just like 9/11. Only problem here being, 9/11 was not the entire country and most of the goddamned world.
We have a government working against us—not putting military hospitals in place, ignoring the pleas of the governors, telling lies and continually looking for a way to get more personally, more grift, more money, more for their friends and nothing for the better good of all. We have a government where the Secretary of State lies on the podium and praises the brilliance of POTUS in a pompous, prideful way—not supporting or caring for his State Department while laughing along about POTUS calling it the “Deep State Department” when we should be addressing the crisis at hand. It’s all jokes and revelry. It’s trashy sheet cake at Mar-a- Lago with botoxed blondes and rich old men—living the life they feel entitled to—in a manner of Marie Antoinette. It’s about branding and golf games and toxic Princess Ivanka playing big girl in government. It’s culture of inflated people, reality tv people who are referred to as “actors”, and influencers who shill for a job—begging for free stuff so get “clicks”. It’s old chestnuts like the convicted, televangelist, Jim Bakker revisiting his true skill of selling…to take advantage of this sad moment to sell collodial silver as a proven remedy against Novel Coronavirus. It’s about bailing out the casinos and cruise ships, the hotels and amusement parks without helping the people who pay their salaries and who have (as a minority) elected them to these positions of power. It’s about soul-less cheating, fraud and lies. It’s about getting away with things and never owning “it”. It’s about never saying you are responsible, or you are sorry. It’s never about greatness as a people but personal greatness as a man…as a symbol of what some people in the country see as a reflection of what they believe is good, right, righteous and God-approved. It is a sick place for us to be.
What matters is whether he is a danger to the country, because he will do it again. And none of us can have confidence, based on his record, that he will not do it again, because he is telling us every day that he will. – Adam Schiff
If we do not radically take the bull by the horns on this one, we are not the people I believed us to be. We must act without looking for permission, to save our souls, our skins and our place as Americans. We must stop talking about the way things have always been. That was then, this is now. Old protocols, old “manners” and methodologies have failed us. The White Men in charge have brought this house down out of greed in not acknowedging that we have a defective, sick man with too much power running the country. That vote to impeach was one stroke, with the other to remove so beautifully argued and voted down out of spiteful self-aggrandizement (several Senators were awarded money post vote), self interest and greed.
I implore you, give America a fair trial. She's worth it. – Adam Schiff
We are waiting for leadership and it’s not coming in a big way. Each one of us must step forward and cooperate, plan and work together for our own survival. The leaders we have are too polite or too polluted to get us through this. We must start in our neighborhoods—and work our way up. The only way through this tragedy is to go through it. There is no around, above or below. Straight forward.
I am proud that many of us do understand that now is not the time for Me but for We. There are things we need to do for the betterment of all of us.—if that means sacrificing personal movement and freedom, for now—that is what we need to do. if it means helping others through gifts of money, of mental/emotional support we need to be there. I can rattle on and on about all of this as I have been managing this through trying to drink from the firehose of news, of twitter, of newspapers and websites. I have been , for the past 3 years living through Trump’s horrors since day one thinking and hoping that “this is the bottom”…and in the tradition of Alice falling down the hole—the hole just gets deeper— the bottomless pit of Trump’s evil, criminal administration so singularly represented by a diaper wearing old man with a toupee and ill painted bronzer who is certifiably demented.
We must step forward, own where we are and decisively act for change..
We must.