The Great Unlearning

I'm unlearning so much right now. Almost everyone I know is too. How about you? Here we're currently calling this era The Great Unlearning and letting go that really doesn't feel great very often at the moment. Or TGU, for short. ;-)

This piece summarizes the core of what we're unlearning about here now. I'm certain that this is our core now, because I wrote this straight off the top of my head. I can only do that with what sits at my core. We're unlearning about:

• The plant kingdom, that is, the green world as a whole
• Earthlings and humanity as a whole
• The United States of America
• Ourselves

Together now, not separately. And we're letting go of a few long-time shared illusions and a few of our own isolation-based fears now too. It's not easy. At least not for us. But at least we're together now.

Unlearning about the plant kingdom

My own ancestors knew a lot about plants and trees– much of which came from real, day-in-day-out relationships as gardeners, farmers, travelers, and foragers who respected the earth and the green world– so their plant wisdom was both lovely and useful. And, some of it was incomplete, because they were new to the land here and not nearly as good at listening to native people and their wisdom as they believed they were. Also, some of which was seriously misunderstood, which tends to happen when knowledge, plants, or land are taken, not freely offered and gratefully received. All wisdom and relationship is lost when things are stolen in the plant kingdom– so thieves believe they've taken something of value when what they've really done is just fooled themselves and pushed both relationship and wisdom even farther out of reach.

My own people managed to hang on to a surprising amount of plant relationships and wisdom, given the full history of herbalism and colonization and pharmaceutical companies and modernization in the U.S. I suspect because those in the plant kingdom helped us all along the way. But we also managed to lose a lot along the way. Or, it was taken from us: belittled and mocked, forbidden, driven underground, punished, or outright stolen. That happened to all our ancestors, friends. To white people, too. We white folks just tend to know the least about what was taken from us. Tend to have our heads the farthest in the sand. At least here in the U.S. where we live.

The great news is that even when we forget these relationships and our deep and abiding connection to the earth and to each other, the plants don't forget. The forests don't forget. Rivers and oceans don't forget. And honestly, our people's spirit, or DNA if you prefer, doesn't forget either. Relationships and beings we love can be lost for a while. But that seed of love stays with us, within us, and always returns us to who and what we love most, eventually. Today, in person, I can sense a true lover of all things green from a block away, often before you even speak. No matter who your ancestors were. That wasn't directly taught to me by any of my aunts, uncles, grandparents, or great grandparents. But many of them could do it. And so can I, now that I've spent the time to unearth what my body remembers.

Here we've spent years unlearning that some plants are nothing more than annoying, evil, and persistent weeds and that a lot of time and money and energy must be expended to ensure that they're destroyed and don't spread. Regularly destroying plants without having a relationship with them– without knowing the why behind why they were present or how they were helping– was definitely a part of our childhoods here. Unlearning that goes hand-in-hand with learning that every plant that shows up around you is there for someone else, not just for themselves. Some weeds' tap roots pull minerals up from the deep to help other shallow-rooted plants. Some weeds feed early springtime pollinators before the rest of the plants show up for the season. Some work as natural ground covers and then disappear in the heat of the summer sun to make way for other plants arriving to take their place. Some are covered with thorns that protect smaller plants, young trees as they grow, and/or animals.

The most stubborn weeds show up to help us with our most stubborn problems. They will even follow you from home to home as you move if you're too stubborn and clueless to notice them. For example, drinking early spring cleavers (sticky weed) in water or juice or eating some early chickweed in the springtime helps humans with the lymph-system stagnation that comes with the greater inactivity of cold wintertime. Or, on the community level, some weeds show up where humans have injured and disturbed the natural order and where humans must now show up as cross-generational and/or cross-cultural communities to stand with the land and the people who love the land the most, instead of against them as some ancestors did.

Almost all weeds are either food or medicine or utilitarian (such as cordage for rope) or beautiful inspiration or all of the above, for somebody, if not for humans. These relationships are still with us. I spent the last decade learning that it's possible to care about both your plant and people neighbors so much that you can become a matchmaker– connecting plants and the people who need them and vice versa.

When you want them to be teachers, the plants that show up around you can help you learn something that you– specifically you– need to learn next. That's right. Just-in-time training. For free. Is what the generous green world offers. Here, for example, wild violets showed up on the land eight years back to help us learn how to hold immense grief when we lost someone young from our family who we couldn't imagine living without. And stinging nettles taught us the power of not saying yes to everything and everyone all the time, stretching ourselves far too thin and depleting our nervous systems. Douglas fir showed me how to be a community-centered being, and then entrepreneur, or as the forest here says, how to be a mother tree. Fireweed taught us about our own ability to rise from the ashes, how to share from abundance without overextending ourselves, and, for the men in the family, how to heal prostate troubles. Wild rose taught us how wildness, beauty, and thorns, together, can be resilient enough to hold an entire civilization of diverse beings together. Wild rose taught me how to sense ancestors on the land– a habit that caused me to begin to spend more time listening and learning about who was on the land before us.

There are human elders– wise, generous, and at least one step ahead of us in both experience and sense of humor. Some of us are lucky enough to value them and learn from them while they're still with us. And then there are plant elders. Plant elders are all of those things plus they exist with almost zero felt need to ever judge us or verbally correct us. They carry no human baggage. This leaves us far more opening to curiosity and listening in their presence, and it leaves them far more time for humor and jokes and helping literally everyone around them. Forest and orchard trees, in particular, are hilarious and deeply healing. Have you heard them yet? Sit at their feet. And just listen.

Unlearning about earthlings and humanity

Unlearning that there are no such things as weeds in the plant world– only helpers and teachers and neighbors and, occasionally, beings trapped in places they really don't want to be– has meant, for me, slowly unlearning roughly the same thing about human beings. That I can no longer hate a plant now means that I can also no longer hate another human being. Period. Wow did I not see that one coming. And when I say that I can't hate another human being, that's not a head-in-the-sand, don't-hold-people-accountable thing. We move more powerfully when centered on love and our interconnectedness, and we can hold each other accountable just fine, actually much better, as communities, and as families, and even as nations, without hatred. When we hold each other accountable, while centered on love and interconnectedness, we don't have to keep reteaching the same lessons again and again and again. With interconnectedness and love, most lessons stick the first time.

I use the term earthlings these days, because humanity as a whole is just 0.01% of all life on earth. When we forget that and center only ourselves, as individuals we humans (me and my people, at least) tend to either get remarkably arrogant and imagine that we're god-like beings here to rule the planet or galaxy from above with an iron fist or we (again, me and my people, at least) go all the way in the opposite direction and feel so alone and small and helpless that we can fill with fear to the point that almost nothing else can get in, which can lead to almost complete self-immobilization, just getting by, just going through the motions, which can require feeling almost nothing at all, dissociation from our bodies and surroundings, and constant distraction, or medication, or addiction, or all of the above.

Humanity doesn't have to settling for any of that crap when we center on our interconnectedness most days.

Most of us have loving community, loving friends, loving family, loving neighbors, loving regions, loving nations, or at least loving earthlings all around us to connect and reconnect with, to help us re-energize to face these often bleak and violent times we're in. And to remind us of the love and empathy for ourselves and others that is always in us when we're present and paying attention and connected to the soil beneath our feet, at least.

Humans (my people at least, but fortunately not all people) seem to be one of the only species on earth that can regularly forget our unbreakable connection to life on earth.

At the moment, that is.

Things are changing. We are changing. Humanity is changing as a whole right now, as almost all of us return to our innate understanding about how deeply connected we earthlings actually are. This is going to be a rough time for the final few people now fighting hard against a planet full of billions of loving and interconnected people either fully present already or just waking up. For example...

Unlearning about the United States of America

Here in the U.S., it's no secret that the federal government is a complete mess right now, and so are most, or many, of the rest of us who live here at the moment. Because we're all connected to each other, and now we're connected to the worst delusions and fears isolated humans have conjured up (which has been true for along time), and they now have a really big microphone and loudspeakers because they're running the federal government.

The fears of the most isolated and neglected and abused/abusing among us– people we may call con men, narcissists, white supremacists, fascists, abusers, misogynists, cheaters, or the most wildly delusional evangelical folks on earth, depending on who we are– would be manageable within our loving communities were they not continually funded and elected by billionaires determined to keep their cash cow in line. Their cash cow is the non-greedy, overworked masses of people on earth– 8.2 billion of us– and the earth herself. For a long time now, the worst of the billionaires have convinced a lot of people in the U.S. that our non-greedy neighbors on the ground are the problem. That somehow, it's the loving, generous, giving, or suffering neighbors and travelers we see every day who are to blame for the fact that almost everyone in this country grows financially poorer by the day.

We're connected to our country's neighbors too, so the mess that is our currently billionaire-owned and authoritarianism/fascism-spreading government is also making people around the globe suffer. And not just suffer but die. We're directly threatening some neighbors and friends and killing other neighbors either via weaponry and information sold or leaked to bad actors and genocide perpetrators, or withholding much-needed support and funds that we already promised to others, or direct action by our military that sadly finds itself with a self-absorbed, greedy, vengeful, demented, and cowardly narcissist at its follow-the-chain-of-command top. A guy who thinks dictators who kill their own people are cool.

We cannot hide from this reality now. Some of us never could. All of us can't now.

The people on the ground who we've been groomed for generations to hate aren't the problem. Today, it's the people running the U.S. federal government, and the whole world can see that now. As an empath, I can feel that truth as I move through the world. All adults I encounter are either actively fighting these men or tapping out to rest and grieve our substantial losses, and help others, so they can fight another day. Those not fighting at all at the moment are resting and relaxing to bring rest and relaxation back to a tired adult world. Adults are amazing!

The U.S. federal government has been a mess for a while now– somewhere between approximately 1 and 249 years, depending on your background and perspective. In the past 45 years, from my perspective, we were pushed entirely off of our goal of being a democracy of and by more people here as a whole and into being an oligarchy: a government clearly by the extremely financially wealthy and for the extremely financially wealthy only. What we're experiencing in 2025 is the culmination of a billionaire-funded plan to bring us to a dictatorship-supported oligarchy. This is the best form of government that chronically neglected and abused children who become chronically isolated and disconnected men can imagine. And it's horrifying. They absolutely need to deport good people and disappear good people into for-profit prisons. They absolutely need neighbor-hating fascist footmen to protect themselves when all the rest of us protest the losses of hundreds of years of hard-won human and environmental rights. They absolutely need people blaming all their neighbors on the ground– anyone but the bad-actor billionaires stealing from everyone now. We're living the end game dreamt of by all "Big white daddy always knows best" men in this country. The saddest people on earth. Trapped in a "far better time" imaginary past that wasn't the good time for anyone that they imagine it is.

Here now, everyone else– all non-billionaire elders, adults, young adults, and children– are written off as either animals or toddlers who need to be protected by a handful of cruel men at the top or eliminated by their paid soldiers.

The problem with this "all non-billionaire adults are just animals or children" approach is that it's 100% fantasy. It's delulu, as younger folks would say. So, the men at the top in the U.S. now have actually got to be the most delusional, creepy collection of con men, narcissists, convicted criminals, abused/abusing, misogynistic, white supremacist and racist, or religious doctrine-twisting folks walking the earth. This is their end of days– not ours– and most are so disconnected from reality, drugged, demented, or dancing with chainsaws on stages right now to even know that. They think they've won. Every day that turns out not to be the case just makes them madder.

This is actually the end of the era where such massive delusion could be hidden, tolerated, or celebrated. The era where humanity as a whole is simply done with it.

They cannot hide now. These wounds are being surfaced through them and held by humanity as a whole. Have you seen the protests against fascism around the world? Massive love-centered gatherings? Boycotts and divestments slowing down and stopping once unstoppable corporations, organizations, governments, and militaries? People on the ground creating, vetting, and sharing massive spreadsheets to help families most devastated by U.S. policy? The love-centered beings that will save us are us, and they are all around us in the U.S., yes. But they're also our neighbors. Humanity herself won't stand for this BS anymore.

During the past 45 years in the U.S., the financially wealthy have become exponentially wealthier and almost all the rest of us have grown financially poorer. Billionaires own so much wealth now, and so much of the U.S. government now, that billionaire-centered, cruelty-for-everyone-else-centered policies are now being pushed through over the screams and heartbreak of almost all U.S. citizens this year. Very few elected white men are prepared to push back against the cruelty-centered oligarchs and con men, regardless of what party they currently align with. Women and people of color– who've had to lean on community to survive and thrive, growing far stronger and full of empathy and insight and true community support in the process– do far better against them now, but women and people of color still struggle to win seats in the U.S., because the billionaires foster fear, apathy, misogyny, and white supremacy in voters and fund non-stop outright voting interference and gerrymandering and other forms of blatant cheating, like making voting almost impossible for people working multiple jobs, and even paying for votes, in some places. They do much of this with their social media and media empires optimized to sell their twisted ideas about humanity while also making money off that same humanity. They also have the cash to buy elected officials outright– something that could be hidden in the past but that is crystal clear now.

They cannot hide now. We are awake to the pain they're causing, especially to the most vulnerable among us. We won't let them hide now. Won't let ourselves hide either.

Their approach has shifted from being simply remarkably self-centered and short-sighted to being globally dangerous, violent, and horrifying to those on the ground. Here in our house we realized a while back that it's not right vs left, red vs blue states, citizens vs immigrants, black vs white, men vs. women and non-binary and trans folks, and all the other divisions that the billionaires are still trying to sell us as diversions, like they sold them to our ancestors. At the moment, though, it's currently less than 2,700 billionaires and their paid lackies vs. humanity and earthlings as a whole. The moment you see that, you can't unsee it. The size of our true numbers vs theirs is staggering now. Isolated and abused, they sought only power. The rest of us, still connected to life on earth, opted for awareness of reality. This reality can be physically felt in the body now when you pay close attention. Touch the earth with your bare hands. Or hold the hand of someone you were told you should hate. You'll feel it.

Even with the largest microphone on earth, they can't delude us anymore. We can't unsee them using the White House as a used car lot full of lemons. We can only delude ourselves, and we're shaking that off now too. I've been watching video after video of people screaming at their billionaire-paid-for "representatives." People owned by billionaires represent billionaires. That's it. They don't represent the rest of us. I've never heard so many regular, non-greedy, flawed-but-neighbor-loving white people stand up and scream at wealthy white people before. Finally! We're watching them turn their inner mama bears and Karens toward those actually causing mass human suffering, pain, and death. Not their neighbors. Its glorious. Makes me want to dance my middle-aged white bod across the yard like a retired ballerina turned ass-kicking, martial-arts pro. Makes everything we do here to help change things feel simpler, and feel more possible, eventhough what we're doing now is far from simple or easy. Nor should it be. We've had to take a step back toward what many of our ancestors faced alone, and we now face making a leap forward together that many of our ancestors, including our former selves, never imagined humanity would make together.

There is a HUGE leap coming. Can you feel it yet?

I feel it rolling toward us much faster now, because there's just no way to hide the craziness of the arrogant-and-always-cruel-billionaire-centered approach now that wildly unqualified, deeply abusive, utterly disrespectful, vengeful, neighbor-threatening, dictator-loving, convicted criminal celebrating, and constantly lying individuals are running the federal government rapidly into the ground, making almost everyone less safe, attempting to run the country like a sweat-shop + prison + slave plantation, hurting all our neighbors, and attempting to fully flip a once-flawed-but-improving democracy, and now-oligarchy, into a full dictatorship aligned with the planet's worst dictators and human rights abusers.

Here in a country where billionaires have been worshiped like gods for decades, everyone is seeing that those among them who rise to the very top today– blithely stepping on good people and harming the earth every step of the way– are actually far less competent than the rest of us now. They're also far less empathetic. Far more isolated. Lacking true community. Often hated by their own family members. Widely mocked. Scared of almost everything and everyone. Have no idea what they're doing. And they're far more delusional than many healthy people could even imagine. Until we saw them. Thinking they can blow up everyone and everything we hold dear and get away with it by lying to 8.2 billion people. Every damn day.

Through them, we can feel and see the worst of our own illusions now too: that we're alone, isolated, and helpless or that we could join them and become godlike beings somehow above all reproach and consequence no matter what we do. Because their illusions and delusions are now being witnessed on a global scale, ours are too. Our illusions and delusions about ourselves and our neighbors got them to where they are today. Got us to where we are today.

These men are horrifying, yes, because they apparently have limitless power to wound, hurt, imprison, deport, erase human rights wins, bribe and punish and influence vulnerable others, grope, rape, disappear, and kill others. But.

They're also now a joke. They are a global joke.

They have become a joke that almost all the rest of humanity is witnessing in real time. From parade floats of them wearing diapers and shaking their tiny fists, to images of them plastered around cities and flashing signs that demonstrate they're clearly stuck at least 90 years in the past, and from encountering crowds of people driving them from their vacation destinations to not being able to find one single human being who will speak to them in other countries– they are a global joke.

They can't hide. And neither can we.

This is what our isolation gets us. This is what disconnection from life on earth gets us. This is what shopping non-stop to hide our pain or believing greedy billionaires gets us. It allows billionaires to exist and grow richer while millions suffer and starve and are intentionally harmed and murdered by their practices. This is what staying silent, and being apathetic, and judging from a distance instead of helping on the ground in person– where neighbors can fully see us– gets us. That amount of money in the hands of the very few and most isolated and privileged (and likely neglected and abused as kids because zero empathy stems from chronic neglect and abuse) ends up hurting everyone on earth.

We will change all of this if we make the leap and change ourselves. We could change most of this with simple federal government policy changes if we had enough elected representatives to represent the true will of the people on the ground right now. At the moment, in the U.S., we don't. Too many folks still believe this is a right vs. left problem. Still practice religions that say to love all neighbors as yourself but still hate themselves so much that they can't help but hate their neighbors too. And still love the men who tell them hating neighbors is a virtue.

This is what allowing our own illusions of isolation and helplessness gets us. It's time to drop these illusions for good too. We aren't helpless. We aren't alone.

White men and women are still saying to me and others "We're so toast."

If I were a forest– all empathy and grounded and full of a certainty humans (me and my people at least) aren't close to having yet– I'd stay quiet and let folks figure this all out for themselves. Luckily, I'm me.

Stop saying "We're so toast."

Stop saying "They'll never be held accountable. There's nothing we can do."

Stop it. Just fucking stop. You dishonor everyone who came before us with these words. Every neighbor. Every elder. Every adult. Every child too.

Stop believing and parroting the lies sold to you by billionaires who don't give a rat's ass about you, or this country, or the planet we all draw life from. They want us scared and broken and defeated. Don't you dare give that to them. Reconnect to life.

Stop believing that you and I are very young children, isolated and alone, who cannot stop the abuse coming our way.

Stop believing you have no voice because your elected representatives work for somebody else. You still have a voice! Use it.

We may be on a terrifying, chaotic path together right now, but we'll survive this, friends. Change your language.

If someone must be toast, then try this. They're toast.

They're toast. We will hold them accountable. All of us. Together. That's not just millions of Americans. That's billions of love-centered humans and all of life on earth.

As long as we stand together against the worst of them and those who work for them, we've got this. As long as we all don't shrug our shoulders, lay down, and simply give up on the future we want for all our brilliant and promising kids and grandkids and neighbors and selves. Give up on each other. Give up on the land we all love.

That's utter nonsense.

Have you never met women who've shifted into Mama Bear mode to protect loved ones? One focused, community-supported woman could drop the lot of them to their drug-addled, skinny, white knees.

Drop all "we're toast" language. We are no such thing. I'm not going anywhere. Are you? Stand up, turn to face them like a boat in a storm, lock arms with your neighbors, and fight together, not each other. Whatever that looks like for you. We are all warriors here. And we are all peacemakers, too. But we are NOT toast.

Unlearning about ourselves

I just spent 10 days with my sister, brother-in-law, almost 10-year-old niece, and they're goofy dog who talks to all animals on TV, even animated animals. It came clear to me this week that my niece could already do a better job running the U.S. federal government than the apparently "grown" men attempting to do so this year. She has loving friends, loving family, and loving community to balance the insecurities that come with growing up in the world today. She hasn't been abused and neglected, so she sees no need or reason for abusing others. She has empathy. She's creative. She's detail oriented. She has ample experience working in groups. She's extremely tech savvy. She has long-time hobbies she loves, including gymnastics and art. She can be both a leader and a follower and find strength and comfort in both. She makes new friends almost instantly at every park she visits– kids older and younger than her and of all backgrounds and genders. She's learning to play the piano, and she's in a choir now too– beginning to balance her love of math, reading, school, teachers, and rule-following with a growing love of creative self-expression and improvisation that is more her choice, more her own. She has a remarkable memory. She knows always-evolving, in-generation slang that she regularly has to teach me. And she has mad organizational skills. Seriously, better than mine at this point.

She is not even 10 years old yet. Kids are AMAZING these days. Have you noticed? So are parents. So are educators.

We aren't what billionaires– and those who believe them– think we are.

She also has an auntie invested in helping her learn, as she grows, how to avoid inadvertently supporting cruelty-centered billionaires, fascism, and men who believe women should have zero rights by not shopping at their businesses and not buying what they sell, or believing the lies they spread about women, immigrants, and humanity as a whole. And how to stand against them via community-building locally, and running for office, and voting. We are all connected. That hasn't changed. We are connected to the amazing too.

We aren't what billionaires– and those who believe them– think we are.

The U.S. government is so ridiculously bad now that most elders, adults, and young adults I know have to tag each other in and out of listening, just to take regular mental health breaks from all the cruelty and needless havoc and pain, and soon, mass poverty in the U.S., that the government is now intentionally causing by further privatizing everything, grabbing land that once was public, and further filling the pockets of billionaires.

We aren't what billionaires– and those who believe them– think we are. We're unlearning what got us here. We aren't becoming more isolated and more overwhelmed anymore. We are becoming more loving, closer as friends and families and communities. We are learning, daily now, what it takes to fight them and win. We are remembering ourselves.

As a writer, I connect to the adult world daily now, on purpose– listening to the worst and the best of us. And. (That and is so important.) As an empathic being, I make sure– and I accept a lot of help to make sure that I make sure– that I give far more of my time each day to the best of humanity, and to a beautiful present, a better future, or to all the earthlings around us who support the living instead of tearing us all down. I now have to intentionally limit how much of the day I devote to listening to the worst among us. I used to listen for hours. Sometimes all day.

They get less than an hour of my time now. I mostly listen to all the beautiful beings organizing, rising, fighting back, resting, grieving, helping, making each other laugh, and loving life even in dark times. How about you? How much time do you give beautiful beings? How much time do you give to the land or to yourself?

As an empath, I must limit the time I spend holding the fears and horrors of the most abusive men on earth, because I can be easily filled with rage and find myself yelling at neighbors and friends or family who I'm not even mad at– becoming part of the problem– if I don't. I can hold a lot of pain now– that's part of being a playful elder– but I choose to hold the pain of those suffering as a result of the billionaire-centered practices and policies. Most days. That may change some day. Unlearning means we're not done growing and learning no matter how old we get.

Letting go of shared illusions

Well, that was a lot of unlearning. I thought I'd end by quickly (for me) highlighting the "letting go" that sits between unlearning and learning for earthlings, or at least for me and my people. Sometimes letting go feels like it takes generations or years. Sometimes it seems to happen in a split second, all at once, for everyone.

I'm leaning more on the forest and plants and wildlife and waterways and earth and local community here and more on my global community than I have in a long time right now too, because they connect me to a larger reality and remind me that here in TGU (The Great Unlearning), humanity as a whole is letting go of these three once-powerful-now-dying shared illusions:

• The illusion that we are isolated individuals. We are connected in more ways than some of us have ever imagined, and we're connecting to new people, and in new ways, all the time. Asking for help, talking with loved ones, organizing or protesting or boycotting with others, creating something (creators are never alone), or even imagining and learning about all the people who made your home, or your food, or your furniture, or your town, or your family possible are fantastic ways to remind ourselves that we are not isolated individuals.
• The illusion that we are helpless and powerless and unimportant as either isolated individuals, isolated families, marginalized communities, mere voters, or non-billionaires. Like all life on earth, we are unique, and we are connected to all life on earth, so our existence is not only welcome here on earth, but celebrated, and we also deeply matter. At this point, only cruelty-centered billionaires and the few remaining sad humans who work for them are selling and buying the lie that we are helpless, powerless, and unimportant. Every day, fewer and fewer people believe that. It's happening rapidly now. If you can't stand watching those currently in power, simply shift your perspective and watch those rising up against them now. Both individually and as large and growing collectives, we are so much more than they, or even we, have imagined yet. As someone somehow still centered on wonder, I can feel unimaginable wonder of a global size heading our way now. Imagine a day when all humans can hear the earth speak! Can feel each other's intentions and energy, and physically shift to accommodate and collectively hold each other's fear, the way most dogs can now! We're so close.
• The delusion that a handful of humans are at the top, or even that all humans are somehow the center of the universe, hold god-like power over others, and have the ability to control all life on earth. We humans are just 0.01% of life on earth. We aren't the 99% as some of our activist ancestors said, though I really love their style. We are the 0.01%. And we are as connected to each other and loved as all the rest of life on earth. Knowing this, and loving this, means dropping the ridiculous delusion that we're somehow more powerful than other beings and more powerful than the planet we all stand on and draw life from. It also means dropping the delusion that a handful of billionaires and their employees (loyal to their money, not even to them) is somehow all powerful, too. Those who move through life on earth with an awareness of our interconnectedness with all of life here and without this humans-are-the-top-or-center delusion have access to an almost infinite variety of choices and responses to holding and celebrating life together as life unfolds. Because we have a lot more friends and community to lean on. A lot more. We, here, means you, too. Only those fully aware of our interconnectedness would come this far with me. I am not for the disconnected or the impatient.

Letting go of our own isolation-based fears

If you're a person who fears prayer, this last bit is poetry. If you think you dislike poetry, then the next words you read are a prayer.

Let me be as loving and welcoming and holding-of-all as the great Pacific Northwest Forest.

Let me be as playful and open to experience as all the well-loved children and well-fed dogs of earth.

Let me be as sensitive to my surroundings and as confident in both myself and the world around me as all wild animals are.

And when I have to be afraid, let me be afraid like the great Pacific Northwest Forest here and not like the isolated, fear-and cruelty-centered billionaires want me to be. Let me know that this planet's life and beauty are immense and strong and will far outlast this final cruelty-centered, isolated-humans-centered era.

Let me know that earthlings are capable of offering protection and love equally to all wonderful beings who deserve it and to all wounded, angry, hurting, and hurtful beings who sometimes don't seem to deserve it at all. Like our forest friends have always taught us to do here. We shelter all. We shelter all. All this takes, now, is a greater awareness of our interconnectedness.

Let me know that people's loving, dancing, organizing, protesting, and marching feet delight trees and tree roots and other life-loving beings.

Let me know that when we adults wake up in the morning and face headlines like these each day:

• IRS Predicts DOGE Lost Half a Trillion Dollars for the USA, from Josh Marshall of @TalkingPointsMemo, sharing what The Post is reporting about the IRS' internal predictions.
• The T____ Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans, from The Atlantic.
• Putin Just Called T_____'s Bluff on Ukraine with the Russian Art of the "No" Deal, from CNN.

That we are so much more than we currently believe we are.

We are at the end of the cruelty-centered, isolated-humanity-centered, billionaire bro club era, which is rapidly coming to an end now.

Some pray for this. Some work for this. Some intentionally rest and relax so we can all remain fluid and playful and energized together going forward. Some write poetry for this. Some, write articles and essays. Some, music. Some, books and movies. Some, spells.

We are so much more than we currently believe we are.

May we all know this in our hearts and feel this in our bodies now.

Together.

Today.