The hatred is sharp. These divisions we experience, in 2021, stem from the perspective poison of being owed. Worse than a child screaming in tantrum’s wake for a toy merely because they can’t have it. Once they get the toy they lose interest and want the next thing they can’t have, yet feel they are owed. You owe me nothing. You don’t owe me understanding. You don’t owe me equality. You don’t owe me justice. You don’t owe me compassion. You don’t owe me your attention of reading my words. If you paid some form of understanding, would it be sincere? If you paid some form of equity, would it have a veil of superiority, since it was you who granted it? If you paid some form of justice, would you feel relief? Or regret? If you paid some form of compassion, would your pity spill into unspoken debt’s messiness? If you paid some form of attention to my words, would they guide or offer a heart shift, or merely temporarily simmer in your frontal cortex until they dissolved? Would temporary mind absorption count as full payment? Owing comes with expectation. Comparatively, to offer a revised concept, hope comes with intention. I hope for understanding. Here we can go beyond mere toleration, and into a realm of deeper connection. I hope for equality. That ensures judgement is a non sequitur when we enter a shared space. I hope for justice. Because justice is one of the hardest to measure or qualify. Humility comes with this hope. What is just? If we intend for justice, then love willing, we might have more room to place all definitions of justice on our social table to survey and sample.
I hope for compassion because we’re all so fu*ked up, and flawed, and seek our place inside belonging. This recognition dwells deep in the well of compassion. Acknowledgement of this reality is so profound I’ll say it again: I hope for compassion because we’re all so fu*ked up and flawed, and seek our place inside belonging. But what of owing to one’s Self? What, if anything, do we owe to our Self? To be realized? Fulfilled? Successful? Accomplished? For many, these are tall unreachable debts. For too many. Some feel lucky just to wake up or make it through another day. Some struggle to feed children, fight cancer, stave addiction. Some feel invisible, ignored, angry, dismissed. Are they owed something? Think about things we once felt we were owed that 2020 into 2021 took away: Our confidence in forever. Our invincibility. Our cockiness that, without thought, we’re able to hop on a plane to vacation in Hawaii. Or go to a concert. Or hug a friend. Or eat in a restaurant without worry that we might get sick. Maybe even die. The ignorance we once basked in covering a truth of people we thought we knew who revealed vastly different values than yours. Or mine. That we can send our kids to school to learn, socialize, or fulfill a socially-trauma-free childhood. Rationality. Civility. Discourse. Science. Facts. Governance. At one time we may have negligently thought we were owed these things. Do we still feel this way? I reject the notion of owing anything to anyone for any reason. I consider the source of who is the debtor, and who is the creditor: Humankind. We are capable of everything. We are capable of nothing. We are cosmic. We are hapless. We are fragile.
We are resilient. We are trapped. We are free. We are afraid. We are courageous. We are obligation-destitute. We are experiential-wealthy. We are limitless within human confines of limitation. Little to no inspiration exists in the realm of obligation. What if the shift of obligation moved to intention? How can we make room for, or allow imagination, if shackled by debts we don’t understand? Who knows what we can create, or discover, if we were somehow able to wipe away the inherent debt of what we owe, and instead provided a clean slate of silence? Or stillness? What if we were encouraged to explore that expectation-free, obligation-empty, liminal place where potential is most fertile and alive? Could we pay homage towards life’s nuanced experiential-coffers instead? *** Janna Lopez is an intuitive book coach, creative writing teacher with a MFA, and published author of Me, My Selfie & Eye. She’s completing her second and third books: one, a collection of poetry, and the other, The Art & Invitation of Self-Conversation - Writing That Moves You Beyond Fear to Freedom based on her work with hundreds of clients. She leads creative writing retreats in Santa Fe, New Mexico, through Land of Enchantment Writing. www.landofenchantmentwriting.com.
2nd “Ask Me”
BY JOE COOKE My father simply spills out of my mouth from time to time, causing me great embarrassment. I hadn’t seen Dan in twenty years, and he had barely changed in all that time, while I have gone from a robust forty-something to a bald old version of Joe Sr., who, in fact, died just a few years ago with a full head of wavy white hair. I said to Dan, “You haven’t changed a bit!” And then the ghost of my father piped in, “Because you were an old guy when I met you!” I could have crawled under the table and died. Dan was speaking to us about this idea he’s been researching called Naikan, which is a Japanese form of guided introspection based on pondering three questions about the effects a person has had on your life: What did I receive from this person? What did I return to this person? What troubles, worries, unhappiness did I cause this person? And purposefully avoiding any consideration of the troubles and difficulties that person caused to you. It’s CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE
SFREPORTER.COM SFREPORTER.COM • • DECEMBER DECEMBER 1-7, 1-7, 2021 2021
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