Humanity at Odds With Itself: Stories in Costume

 by Lydia Lowery Busler

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

~rumi

On Election Day in the US, a great deal of trauma is caused by reactions to stories which, frankly, are not us. While important and even beautiful fears, they aren’t us. Everything Is a story we absorb to process our human experience, and it creates our present reality. We’re most whole, most powerful, most energized, and most calm when we’re present with who we truly are and what we love.

I’m focusing my money and my time with intention toward actualizing it purposefully. I connect to what I am aligned in value and love.

So much we respond to is a reaction to some threat it stirs in us. Our hopes are tied to these fears, too. What is the root of that threat or hope inside us? Our reactions to our experiences and stories are imprinted on our amygdala, and stress provided by cortisol gives us what we need to run. Yet there’s nothing to run from. What we fear is often a result of guarding hearts brimming with the same stuff for every one of us: aspirations, care for self and family, need for security…

When we realize our shared human need for love, dignity, safety, and purpose, we start to see how things which threaten life, our means of earning, our identity, how we care for ourselves, our access to education, or our ability to love cause a fight-or-flight response in almost everyone. As children, we receive love and nourishment any way we can; we each learn what we need and how best to receive it at a very young age, without malice in our hearts.

Can we fault a child for wanting safety and love? No, we work out the trouble with them. Why don’t we do this as adults?

All the blame we cast instead blinds us to the intrinsic humanity connecting us each and all. When failing to see these barriers to love within ourselves, pretty soon, we judge, shout, posture, and fight.

And there’s a reason for our blameful, distrustful reactions at election time. Lives are altered by inflation, and that sits very hard on people. The struggle causes a scar, making it so we can’t see that the economy actually has largely recovered. People’s hearts have also been pummeled by loss in Gaza and Israel. People have experienced insurrection on the country we call Home. And people have been shown that identity can create a barrier to healthcare. When threats on this level happen, we tend to go into fight-or-flight mode. We react. We hunker. We protect. We fight. And we distrust the source of what we’ve seen more than we distrust unfounded promises.

Still, it’s not us. Most stories are outside of us, created collectively by societal scars. Social media, religious institutions, government, media outlets, memes, all give us a view of our life donning a torn red dress. Eventually, we get used to seeing the torn red dress as intrinsic to life. When we remove the dress, there is life, its fears and hopes. And there is everyone else - striving, fearing, hoping, and reacting.

Can we build a bridge to meet others halfway? When we see our humanity, we see what we share. Others can build the opposite side of the bridge while we build ours.

To build our side of the bridge, we first need to become really present and honest with ourselves.

Try this exercise: What is the simplest way to do what you’re doing right now? Try answering this - it’s not easy as it seems. We first ‘know’ what we are doing. Then we judge what we are doing. We come up with reasons for doing the thing. We may ‘know’ why the way we are doing it is best. We may ‘know’ that it’s complicated and we need to fix things. What we ‘know’ stops us from creating.

Now put all of the parameters aside. Can you look at the task as a single goal and go back to having nothing - I mean NOTHING - in the way of preparation, tools, and steps? What’s the simplest way to do it? How can you do it in two steps or fewer?

This exercise is eye opening. And it’s a lot like our hearts. We aren’t present to our heart’s raw straightforwardness because there are too many layers in the way. The more we peel back the layers, the more we realize we haven’t seen the truth at all, only a version of it. Each version gets more and more complicated and often more and more skewed. This is the nature of subjective thinking: it works within the story.

Witnessing our own meaning - and the meaning behind words we hear others say - gets more and more complicated when we try to rationalize it. Our rational mind is excellent for data but not for emotion and energy. The harder we think, the more we miss the truths we so crave. We fabricate meaning instead of understanding the human energy around us.

None of this is to say that there isn’t consequence to the actions of others and that these consequences don’t effect us and our surroundings. At whatever level you come to a space, there is action and reaction. Knowing what we share with other humans allows us to retain blameless, uncluttered perspective to those consequences around us, maintaining the serenity to find the simplest solutions, saving our reactions for fires that may actually cross our path.

Until next time, let this serve as your reminder to breathe deeply - air is free - and notice the rise and fall of your stomach and chest.






Then ask yourself, “Who am I and what do I love?”