the pain is where the wisdom lies

This post was triggered by this photo on FB and someones reaction  which was 'Well said!' Being homeless is hell and everything is a spiritual journey, or everything is not. Period. Circumstance isn't spiritual neither is hunger or abuse, etc. Poverty is poverty. Don't try to make yourselves feel better about that. We lie to ourselves to cover the truth which is almost always guilt and pain. Stop trying to justify the ugly truth of poverty by excusing it as a journey. It isn't. 

At what point do we stop making excuses for our inhumanity? How many times a day do we come across blatant acts of devaluing people and their circumstances or experiences? Does renaming/labeling some person, circumstance or experience a 'spiritual journey' or 'destiny,' or 'Gods way,' or 'your/their path,' or 'karma,' or any number of friggin' words people use today to separate themselves from judgement or from getting off their asses and doing something to help someone really work? Yes, it does because we are a nation full of excuses and labels doing this very thing to our fellow human beings and even ourselves. We include ourselves in these 'feel-good' or 'feel better,' labels. Instead of telling people the truth (or telling ourselves the truth), we fear our own weakness. We fear our humanity. We fear the judgement of others and the rejection and the disappointment. It's hard to be judged by people, harder by the people you love and respect, but the hardest thing to overcome is the disappointment of abandonment by them when you are most in need of acceptance and action wrapped in pure love. Personally, I have my days where i just want to go back to being ignorant but then I realize that would mean I would still be headed on the path of destruction. I don't want to do this again. This is inhumane yet it has been filed with so much truth. I like not getting annoyed by the posts on my Facebook feed, now that I don't have the 200+ friends' I ditched anymore. I liked defriending the people who made me feel like shit because they never showed anything or they were horribly ignorant and such. It felt good to let them go. I'm lonely as fuck but I don't have to cower when I interact with people I should be able to enjoy. Why? Because they were so determined to believe they knew my (or other peoples) circumstance therefore they could judge and remark and assume to the point of triggering me to cut and they were the worst for posting shit that just tried to box and label my pain (and the pain of others) and no matter how hard I tried to give them different ways to view my side they only saw their own. They were closed and boxed tight, even some people who believed they were super open and progressive. Unfortunately, progressiveness does not come with age or book knowledge but with experience and a lot of pain, (whether people want to accept that or not is their problem but the pain is where the wisdom lies). The opportunity to see beyond the visible layers is always, always there for every single one of us. Most will accept things at face value, like people trying to get help by using wording that might trigger guilt or empathy in others when in fact people should be reacting to what they see on the surface and especially below it. We are a nation of advertisers’ right down to our poverty-stricken. We even run most of our 'help' systems now on votes and social networking span and skill. It's repulsive. I'm doing my best to try to scratch the surface of everyone's protective armor and save this fucking planet but to me I only see a path of destruction due to the lack of backbone and honesty towards ourselves first and humanity after. WE ARE CHOOSING TO BE BLIND, WEAK AND DISHONEST TO OURSELVES. If you start with being honest with you and get really good and comfy with that and then begin to get honest with the people in your world and then outside your world you will find that what others think of you stops mattering. That feeling good inside makes everything tolerable because you have a good strong base to stand on and fight, cry, share or support... It's the answer everyone is wasting their lives trying to find. The answer to all things is BE TRUE. Start in truth and then move on in your decisions and paths. Truth can only be found below the layers you are most fearful of infiltrating. You have to pass through then completely to find truth but once you do you will find your need for things like drugs and anything you abuse will lessen or dissipate. You will be running from fewer demons. You will feel stronger internally. I always have given off a strong external appearance but internally I am shaking like a 9.0 earthquake. The older I got the worst the internal quake got. This last few years has forced me into so many frightening places and so much solitary that all there is to do is reevaluate, and such and eventually you have done that to death so you begin digging around in all the deep dark corners and in that you begin to wage a war on your demons.. OK, 'I' began to wage a war on 'my' demons... Anyway, as all mothers will attest, I would really love to be able to keep a few of you from being forced into actually going through the same level of shit and pain I have been enduring to get to your true selves. As I write this though I can clearly hear both of my kids voices saying that although they understand, that they kind of feel like they have to stumble and fall for themselves. I respect that. I was not that kind of person myself. Maybe it was because I lived through so many tragic experiences that I knew I didn't want nor need more of them to learn my lessons. I would take what I could by observing instead. I am more of an observer today than ever before. It is what drives me to fight and to express myself like this and allow myself to face rejection or judgement, I assume. I see too many people that have SO MUCH and see none of it. Come to me and let me point out how incredibly blessed you are, k? Or not. We all still have the right to choose we just have a hell of a lot less to make those choices from these days I guess. (Heavy release of breath)...
I guess I just had one of my morning pre-coffee, pre-Adderall soapbox moments triggered by a photo that for some reason really flipped a switch in me. No, I know why it triggered me because I was once the person in the photo and I wish the world would stop taking photos and start DOING SOMETHING to alter the existence of the subjects they post about. The time could be so much better spent looking for resources for the people or seeing how much help you can gather to offer someone in need the real tangible help they need to move forward. Sustaining seems to be what people not in crisis think is helpful but at some point that is just torture because you want to die damn it. You want the misery to end. You want someone to see you as more than an animal that needs to be fed a bit every day. Humans need to be useful and they need connection and to use their minds and hearts. We need to be seen as viable and visible. Sustaining us is nothing more than watching us wither away slowly and painfully. Like being in a zoo to be observed, but not touched.
And I did it again, rambling on and on... I MUST STOP NOW. OK. I want to keep going BUT I WILL FIGHT IT.... <3
I lied. I added more in a comment on FB:
People don't want to hear it. They want to hear how strong you are or how much you have grown or learned from it. They want you to box it up all tidy and clean so they can consume it and move on. The uglier it is the most likely it is to be real or true. Unless you have observed excessively and deeply dug the trenches of a persons soul with them and seen otherwise (occasionally people do grow and evolve and become super human) the things that give you a twinge of fear, doubt or distrust in people are the things to pay attention to and base your choices on, IMO. The key is to know yourself deep and true enough to not be making those choices based on your own damage. Yo can't do shit until you come to terms with you completely. Even the scary, ugly shit. You have accept it or alter it enough to accept it fully.