Monday, March 26, 2012

And What of the Other 49 Percent?

"Some of us feel that if just fifty-one percent of the global population began emanating happiness, the rest of us would naturally follow suit…

"The opportunity for every consciously responsible person to begin thinking, talking, praying, and meditating for world peace and salvation has always existed. Perhaps it is only now that the potential for lasting change has fully presented itself to our wakening psyches. We are on the threshold of creating a world with unlimited potential and a life of unconditional love. It is well within our power to do so, if we only acknowledge it. So let us start paving the way for the 'new' order of being - that which we always intended from the beginning - but simply forgot."-- Timothy Lynch in "From Immanence to Transcendence: The Missing Link and Creative Evolution"

oh, you know them
they're the ones who laugh at,
make small change, 
out of victims   
& say you brought
your latest episode of victimhood
on yourself

you see how they take
vicarious thrill from shrill tv news
aired each evening & find
the misfortunes,
the up-ended lives of others
the stuff of gossip's glee over dinner

gee, am i glad it isn't me,
they assure themselves nightly
before they turn in

you have to hand it to them
they're convinced theirs is the right way,
yeah, the upright life, as far right
in the spectrum as you can get
& maybe they might be right
& you're wrong, always wrong,
even when wronged

when you fall victim
to others who prey
on the weak, the unaware,
there is no mercy
or consolation granted
that by the grace of their god
you got home intact

the casting of blame is still
on you who doesn't know
how to take care of yourself
as well & as expertly as they do,
you who to their mind doesn't
share the wealth of their neat
orderly predictable lives
that marks their mortal days
 it's a life that says there is no life

& silently you take it all
on the chin

so whether you were raped as a child
molested by someone
assigned a care-giver's role
beaten within an inch of your life
abused  controlled 
by all types of authority figures
called names  
humiliated in front of those you hold dear
the unknowing feast
of snatchers & thieves
& others less than human
 
to the 49 percent
these things hardly matter
for, unlike them,
you never quite learned
to shrug things off
& get on with what is considered
primarily a business
yes, business-as-usual living

out there up there
in a vague promise of a somewhere
is a life of no business
a region with the faint possibility
of scars cleansed,
constant woundings halted,
one where you're not gauged
by your net worth after taxes,
after banal banditry,
after national thievery

after after
thelifeafter

--Babeth Lolarga

Upper photo: Cemetery of Negativity, Camp John Hay, Baguio City, taken by the author in 2005

Lower image: watercolor of Mount Santo Tomas in Northern Philippines

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