Making Peace with Your Roots

Picture of Great Grandparents married in Akron.

LeBron James in my lifetime was not accidental.

I mean, hell, maybe it was, but I don't believe so.

To read in worldwide print the words "Northeast Ohio"… Northeast Ohio people work for everything they get quote.

Nearly brought tears to my eyes.

When for the first time in history he and Cleveland came back from a three game deficit and finally brought a championship game home, I cried right along with Bron-Bron.

To see Rihanna posting pictures on Instagram after the championship I could finally think: thank you. I really, truly, don't need to go anywhere to be of value, to be monumental.

I can grow right from the rich roots of my upbringing and still thrive. I do not need to live in New York City or Los Angeles as I previously believed.

I was proud of where I was from and nothing needed to change for me to feel epic.

What Ohioans know better than most is how to love one another. We appreciate other Ohioans and there is great comradery in being from this insane-weathered state with some of the country's heartiest people. Some of the most AMAZING and INNOVATIVE and LIFECHANGING people are from Ohio! (Toni Morrison, the Wright Brothers, Gloria Steinem, ……………………………………………………….)

I felt okay to not be from much.

I didn't constantly have that hovering, Marxist sense of self-doubt and insecurity around people well beyond my material class.

I don't come from much materially, but from the richest home I know in love, security, support, kindness, and unquestionably thick blood.

I have so much to offer this world, and similarly, not really in a material way. In an energetic and intellectual and heartfelt way I'm a writer and artist.

I offer words, ideas, and images. Shifts in perspective. Emotional thawing.

Immaterial, intangible, and heart-warming resources for living, breathing souls of the universe.

I am here, in the most primal sense, to write words to emotionally thaw our toughened up, desensitized and at time extreme society and say: hey, what's up? Have you looked at the world from this person's perspective lately?

Are you doing okay? What's up in your life?

Are you mentally, emotionally, and spiritually calm and centered?

Is there a shit-ton of baggage weighing down your psyche?

And while you're thinking about it, is there a shit-ton of compression and clenching in your physical muscles as a result of the mental and emotional turmoil you endure?

The good news? You're still here! Reading these words, breathing this air: alive.

The cool thing about being human is that any moment can become our moment of redemption.

We can create our fairy tale lives in these very moments. Notice all that is around you and be grateful for that which is good.

All is as it is.

Simply, imperfectly, perfectly.

"Cosmos" may sound more like "chaos" but in fact means "well-ordered whole."

You don't have to believe in a particular dogma to be fascinated by what already is.

Take Albert Einstein, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin. All of these atheists used the word "God."

Einstein noted that the deeper the microcosms and macrocosms of nature he discovered, the closer he came to God.

It is obvious that institutionalized religion does not actually produce world peace.

In fact, trying to buck the system comprised of BILLIONS of people may not be as simple as it sounds.

But, it is evident that fervently held onto belief systems (clenching) and a REFUSAL (fear) to ask questions that press too closely to your most cherished beliefs about life and death is keeping us deeply apart.

As someone who was raised just outside the institutions of Christianity and Catholicism, as an only child raised by shockingly uncommon secularist parents in rural Ohio, I grew up un-baptized in a town of ultra-Conservatives.

I do indeed feel that people pitied me, and some most certainly showed that they felt they were far superior to me.

As a three to ten year old girl, I cannot quite shake the iconoclastic imagery of me, often completely alone or occasionally joined by one or two others--a few staggering souls left sitting in the pews of a Catholic church while all baptized others had risen and were awaiting the chance to eat and drink the alleged flesh and blood of Christ.

I watched people watch me.

And looking back on it, I definitely, clearly felt that I did not belong.

(Pretty effing glaring, obz.)

I recall the third grade lunch table, being told I would go to hell for questioning the logic of Noah's ark. "You mean you think that all families came from just one family on a boat?"

I recall going to Christian Bible Study gatherings with elementary school friends and being in awe by what these people believed, coloring and cutting and pasting Biblical pictures of smiling men and fish and saying, "Really? You believe he was eaten by a fish and lived for three days?"

Similarly, in a non-offensive but matter-of-fact example, when I first moved from rural Ohio to a larger city and fell in love with a Guyanese fencer from Long Island whose family were first generations from a third world country, and Hindu, I can tell you at that point in my life I literally knew next to nothing about Hinduism.

It seemed pretty natural for me to thus not believe in the dogmatic aspects of this religion. I could find wisdom in their stories and respectfully listen to beautiful allegories and facts about their gods, but I had not ever once before heard these stories and tales of specific gods and belief systems, thus they did not actually create truth to me.

Truth, I found, with writers and intellectuals and transcendentalists, with Albert Einstein and Thomas Jefferson and Emerson and all the other naturalists the, a (without) - theistic (institutionalized religion) dreamers who directly experienced God through all they had ever known.

God exists to me in the wind, from the shining sun, from the intricacies of grass blades, marching ants and shimmering sunshine atop the waves of ponds, red-orange fish swirling beneath, bubbles shooting upward.

Life is mesmerizing exactly the way it is, and though I haven't really met that many people raised just outside of religion (by parents who did not force them to attend or believe something specifically) I do believe that we would have much more world peace if more people were less indoctrinated into what is for many, very scary threats of forever-torture, pain, and suffering in Hell.

I know people shook to their core to think outside of what they have been told.

Do not question, they have been told, OR ELSE.

And the OR ELSE is pretty God damn (literally) terrifying: an all-loving and allegedly forgiving God damning you to the depths of a forever, burning Hell.

What in the actual F?

I know so many hundreds of people who are afraid to consider that this isn't true, because questioning your faith is precisely what winds you up in that evil place.

I have not found people raised with dogmatic religion to be open minded in even the slightest way of receiving another's religion that differs from theirs.

I can say that I have been exposed to many, many Christians, Catholics, Buddhists, Hindus, and Atheists, and there is not a damn bit of difference in us where it matters the most.

We are all alive on this one globe, together in the same time and era.

Sorry to break it to you, but we obviously can't ALL be right about these VERY specific "facts."

Either YOUR specific story is THE truth for EVERY race and culture on this earth or it ISN'T.

Or your cosmic, universal, worldly God literally only focused on your specific country to expose THE ONE TRUTH to.

Frankly, it's laughable.

I mean, sorry… but… DUH……….

To believe strictly in one specific religion is to assume that your version of history and philosophy is correct, immediately putting on blinders to the insight and wisdom of ALL other cultures and systems of perceiving the world.

As globalization rises rampant and the age of Information unites us globally in a way like no other, how can we still cling to these limited systems of belief?

It is literally BAFFLING to me and the only answer I can immediate assume is this:

People are fucking TERRIFIED of death and are uncomfortable AS FUCK thinking about it.

Where were you before you were born?

Where will you go when you die?

What do you really believe?

What have you been told to believe?

Why were you told to believe it?

Where I come from, many are taught specifically to NOT think for themselves, and this is perhaps why I have internalized a wee bit of self-rejection--I have absolutely been rejected from institutions that require conformity and non-questioning of ideals.

The many, many, many Catholic higher-ups molesting many is an example to me of why faith cannot much be placed into the hands of other manipulative men who proclaim one thing and do another.

I relate to what, to me, is much more obvious: the truth and reality exactly the way it is. Nature. The stars. The unknown. Is this not inspiration enough?

Do we need our Santa Clause stories so badly? Great stories, heart-warming, really, but absolutely not based in reality.

Sure, sure, I guess I'll "play along" as part of society because everyone insists that I must tell my children of Santa Clause!

The joy it brings them! The joy it brings them!

The crashing, heartbreaking reality of finding out the truth.

Is that really worth it for our kids?

To lie and then continue to lie when they start to put the pieces together?

They get that creeping, sickening stirring in their low-bellies and they start to know something is not right.

And when we, as their mentors and guides at last tell them: yes, kid, your gut instinct was spot on and because we were afraid to hurt your feelings we tried to reassure you that your gut instinct was incorrect and in fact, this lie WAS true.

Why so much lying?

Culturally not the coolest.

Over my years as an entrepreneur, I've encountred a wide array of CEOS, inventors, MBAs, and a few of the many have been ultra duds, people you could not pay me to work with. Or would have to pay my highest rates for me to even consider.

I love the concept of firing certain clients.

The customer ISN'T always right, and in an era of rampany competetion, avsolutely do not have any desire to deal with the petty, pretenious, and obnoxious naysayers of the world.

Want to take our business (aka you incessant phone calls, shitty attitude, and condescneding tone) elsewhere? By all means, please.

Attracting the RIGHT clients is just as important as repelling the people you dread to see coming.

This is not to say that I believe people can't be redeemed… but while you're in the process of becoming a more tolerant, social, kind, or receptive human… or not… I don't need to take your shit, ever, for any amount of money.

Some may call me a fool, rude, or unrealistically idealistic… I call myself someone who knows that life throws curveballs and shit storms on its own accord.

Call me stubborn or naïve, but I see no reason to bend over backwards and beg for a client that treats me like crap.

I know there seems to be a long list of "those people", we all know the ones—they transcend all races, all religions, all classes, all intersections: they are perpetually dismal, negative, critical, rude, irate, irrational, disruptive people.

Whoever you are, water seeks its own level.

I do not set out to be treated like shit.

In fact, the stubborn plight of becoming one's own boss you could likely safely assume comes from a subconscious desire to want to be mostly in control of your own life and destiny.

I did not set out to take shit on this path, and for the most part, I have not and will not.

Story of the LA CEO I met with in Columbus, Ohio, someoe surprisingly who was born and raised in my small hometown in small town Ohio. I didn't know him or his family and had never heard of them.

Writers may relay facts but can also sound judgemental. Or maybe that's just me, being judgemental.

But the dude was a twat. Show don't tell… he was arrogant and condescending, rude and fat and quite clearly insecure. In designer clothes with gelled up hair, an air of superiority about him that seemed vastly undeserved.

Speaking of our hometown, "I NEVER go back there…" he said with arrogance and pride. Obviously, like he thought he was better than those around him.

Like it's a stain.

I used to be like this, determined I needed to move to Los Angeles or New York City to "be someone". I already am someone. So are you.

Many of the world's greatest writers and change agents are from podunk towns in the middle of unheard of nowhere.

Greatness is not born from location.

And flocking to a location to think greatness will rub off on you seems just as laughable: wearing the latest clothing, driving the latest cars, doing whatever is trendy to fit in at all costs of conformity, thinking that emulation IS authentic greatness. It isn't.

Stop fooling yourself.

I find it offputting to encounter those who treat their roots like it's shameful. To shun where ou came from—who you're ashamed of being.

Advertising.

But of course.

The grand illusion of perpetually trying to be something you can never be… to reach a place of satisfaction that will come from just one more expensive watch, the latest and greatest car, the biggest and most lavish home.

There is no end to this quest to quench unreachable contendedness.

It is already within you, now.

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