But after taking a good, hard look at the "Occupy" movement, I am now convinced that it is for real and that the powers-that-be have not had a hand in getting it started. So it appears that people are actually waking up to the reality that they have been lied to, robbed, cheated and manipulated by their government and the corporations that own it. That's why we're hitting the streets.
I had a friend recently tell me that he thought the protests weren't accomplishing anything. I disagreed for a variety of intangible reasons until I ran across several articles talking about how 1,000,000 people across America had closed their accounts with big banks (B of A, Chase, Citibank, etc) and deposited their money in local credit unions. This includes small businesses, churches and non-profit organizations. Somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 billion was transferred in just the last 30 days. Now this is just a drop in the bucket for these big banks, but the message was sent loud and clear due to the fact that the big banks felt that they had to increase fees and tack on additional fees to their remaining customers in order to make up the lost business. It only makes sense that if they continue to do that, they will lose even more customers. It's as if they are making themselves irrelevant. Why? Maybe they know if they fail, which they will, they will get yet another bail out, courtesy of the US taxpayers. It's almost a "pay-me-now-or-pay-me-later," scenario. I guess in that sense, my friend might be right. Maybe the protests aren't accomplishing anything.
So I go back to my intangible reasons why I felt the "Occupy" movement was a worthy undertaking. Taking a look at myself to understand what changes had happened in me in the last 3 years, I found what I had in common with the movement. In 2009, I sold my Radio Shack franchise, which ended an over 30 year career in retail, and decided to become a musician and recording engineer. At least, that was the plan. This ended up being way more difficult than I had ever imagined! Turns out that I had stuffed a lot of emotions inside of me over those 30+ years that I never had enough time to deal with. I say, "enough time," because I had been doing work on myself for about the last 20 years. I would go to retreats, individual counseling, couples counseling, workshops, etc. in order to recharge my batteries for the day-to-day life. Little did I know, all that work on myself turned out to be nothing but a band aid to get me out onto the front lines again, until yet another layer of myself had gotten burned off. Being out of retail and the regular schedule of what that meant, I then had "enough time" to come face to face with me in order to recreate myself and refocus my purpose. My wife and I tried to do a decompression trip to the Grand Canyon after selling the Radio Shack, and then immediately moved to another town after we got back. When things settled down was when the depression and anger hit me. Dealing with those emotions became very overwhelming to me to the point that I lost my ambition and motivation. Here I was, at a place in my life where I was going to finally get to do something I've always wanted to do that was creative and exciting, but yet I couldn't move. I was frozen with fear and depression.
Thankfully, the place we moved to was an intentional community of healers who were either facilitating psycho-spiritual workshops or were participating in them. So I chose to participate in a few and take advantage of the opportunities that were literally, right outside my door. There was a lot of dismantling of myself. I was dying to who I was and re-birthing myself to whoever I was to become. There was lots of frustration, anger and deep grief that got expressed during that time. All of which were accompanied by buckets of tears. This has gotten me to a place in my life where I am much more functional, productive and above all, happier! It's amazing how much a good cry can help ones well-being!
However, the one thing that I am still in process with, is my anger towards the illusion of the "American Dream." And while I know I will be meeting with a group of men soon about anger issues, I felt this blog would be a great primer for that meeting. So please bear with me.
I am really ticked off at the fact that I have been manipulated all my life into this system of, what now feels to me like, slavery! I have been a slave to the system. By that I mean a slave to the education system, the religious system, the governmental system, the capitalist system, the patriarchal system and others, I'm sure. Damn, no wonder I've been depressed! I've been a friggin' slave this whole time! I could really get angry at my parents for not being smarter about all of this. But I've come to realize over the years, that our parents always did the best they could in every given moment. The same holds true for me throughout my life. But at the same time, while I'm angry at all of these systems, I know that on some level, I allowed myself to be enslaved. For that, I am very angry at myself for buying into all of it, even when it didn't feel right. I stuffed my feelings and kept pushing on because that's what everyone else was doing. And in so doing, I enslaved myself. But I have been working through this a bit.
Lately, I have been doing everything I could to change my mindset and erase the programming of my past. Reading, meditation, prayer, processing, writing in my journal and even blogging have been my best tools recently. This also helps me to stay focused on what needs to happen next and gives me more of a sense of purpose. But at the same time, it is a very insecure feeling due to the fact money does not show up at regular intervals like when having a 9 to 5 gig. When I feel on purpose, I know all will be okay and that somehow, someway the bills will get paid. In this way, because I'm on purpose, I feel more free and less enslaved by the systems. I'm finding a way to make it on my own. I know this sounds funny, but regardless of what happens in the economy, there's a part of me that feels I'll be just fine. Why? I guess because I feel like I'm pulling myself out of the building before it collapses. I think the less identified and the less dependent we are on these systems, the better off we will be when they cave in.
That's part of what the "Occupy" movement is all about. People around the world know that they've been duped and they have a sense that it is all collapsing. Above all, they don't want to get stuck paying for the clean up. So people are trying to either dramatically reform the systems in place or are willing to help crash the systems now to immediately create what's next and not prolong the agony. That's what I believe needs to happen. Completely new systems need to be put in place that put people and the environment first, because the systems as they exist right now are corrupt beyond repair. And they (the Occupy Movement) don't feel that just electing someone different into office is going to change anything.
The thing that the folks in the "Occupy" movement need to realize is that they need to free themselves from the systems in whatever way they can; like moving your money from big banks, spending money with only ethical companies, focusing on your purpose, doing your inner work, etc. As Gandhi said, "Be the change you want to see in the world." That one idea can bring us more freedom than we could ever imagine!
