And I have just watched another piece of social media madness telling me what a BAAAAAAD year 2016 was,
All those celebrities died.
America elected Donald Trump.
We went on making terrible decisions about our planet and its future.
We went on making terrible decisions about ourselves and our contribution to the economy.
We went on making terrible decisions about other humans and how they should run their countries, their lives, their relationships.
WOE IS ME!!
Yes, we learn from our mistakes.
I KNOW that.
But we will not learn if all we do is wring our hands and shiver with horror at how horrible it all is or was.
And that’s what it’s about isn’t it? That shiver, that little, closet ripple, that little flow of adrenalin. We can indulge in it because it’s safe. These things are not me, not us, and we can share in that little shiver, indulge in that little ripple, together.
After all, there’s nothing we can do about it.
and
It’s not really about us.
In the latest video (quite drastically edited from the original, but well done, nonetheless), the one that finally stirred me to write this piece, a man wakes up after being asleep for the whole year. His minder lists the achievements throughout the year. The man grunts.
His minder lists all of the dead celebrities. The man grunts, and is noticeably moved.
A gorilla who was shot is added to the list with the additional statement that “No-one is safe.”
His minder prepares to top the list
“There’s one thing I haven’t told you yet and it’s really, really bad.”
The man’s response?
“We’ve run out of ham?”
The answer, of course, was Donald Trump’s election, and yet somehow it was a let-down after the possibility of the loss of ham.
Not me, not us, not anything that concerns me, really.
Shall I add the war and killings and genocide, the rapes of the environment and of humans?
Man’s inhumanity to man, woman’s inhumanity, humankind’s inhumanity?
People not being the best a human could be?
“After all, there’s nothing we can do about it.”
and
“It’s not really about us.”
In the way of all stories, it always is about us, and there is always something we can do about it.
You will know why it is about you, about us, and what you or we can do about it – your personal lesson from the story, the one you need right now
what you need to learn about death and dying
what you need to learn about humanity and being the best human you, me, we can be.
Right now I have to work on evolving into the best human I can be, in order to contribute to the best humans we can all be.
And right now, I need to learn how we can use story in order to lead us all to being the best humans we can be.
I end as I began – with social media – one of the most powerful storytelling platforms that we have –
and return to that video,
which in the end,
turned out to be a wonderful story –
because it made us all return to just what mattered in 2016 –
and that’s the ham, and Harambe,
and how we can only really change the world with compassion
and from within our own lives.