The Rising Heat
As the internal fire flares again within me - my brain sending signals to my body to turn up the temperature, causing my whole being to radiate heat and flush in an attempt to release the pressure - I find myself searching for the trigger.
What came before this moment?
Was there a thought, a deed, an action that pressed play on this rising heat within?
And then, as the sensation passes, I breathe a sigh of relief. Another wave gone. Another step closer toward the door - the eventual exit from this phase of life.
A Mirror to the World
In the quiet aftermath, I am drawn to the parallel between my inner and outer world.
Flicking through another doom scroll filled with torment and tragedy, I am reminded that as removed as we may think we are, we are also inextricably linked - on a micro level - to the countries, people, and natural world experiencing chaos and turmoil.
What happens out there... echoes within.
Growing up in a World of Warning
As I contemplate recent world events, I am taken back to my childhood and the messages that shaped us.
My generation began near the end of the Vietnam War. The harrowing images and narratives of conflict were woven into daily life - on the news, in conversations, and reenacted in television shows like China Beach. These were intermingled with the ever present tension of the Cold War and the looming nuclear threat.
Living in New Zealand, the Rainbow Warrior bombing brought a deep sense of national sorrow. Apartheid dominated headlines. Stories of generational war in the Middle War were constant and unrelenting.
And yet, alongside this, there was compassion.
We stayed up all night for Telethon, raising money for those in need.
We sang along to Live Aid, hearts breaking for the starving children in Africa.
Our childhoods were built on a strange duality - messages of imminent danger, paired with a call to care deeply.
A Plea For Peace
At just ten years old, I wrote a letter to then U.S. President Ronald Reagan, begging him not to drop the bomb. It was a heartfelt plea - for calm, for order, for peace in a world that felt perpetually on the brink.
Then came another looming threat - the disappearing ozone layer. It marked the beginning of a wider awareness: that modernisation and the industrial revolution carried long-term consequences we were only just beginning to understand.
Hope, Idealism, and a Dream of Something Better
Despite it all, I searched for hope.
I sang and danced with like-minded souls at local "earth power points," calling in a shift in energy for a new age. I hoped. I prayed. I envisioned a better world - one of peace, balance, and abundance for all.
A fairy tale.
A Ten of Cups.
A crystal vision of harmony.
The Illusion of Easier Times
As a generation, we pulled ourselves together. We pulled on our "big girl" and "big boy" pants, and got on with it.
We grooved through the 70's.
We embraced the loud colourful energy of the 80's.
We grunged and raved our way through the 90's and into the new millennium with fervour, believing the hardest times were behind us.
But as the decades pass, that illusion has slowly unravelled.
Questioning Reality
There are moments now when I wake and genuinely question if we are living in some kind of absurd simulation.
How can so much of today's reality be real?
As truths begin to surface, it feels as though truth itself has become stranger than fiction.
Turning Inward
And so, I am called inward.
To make sense of what is happening outside, I must examine what is happening within.
The naivety and innocence of the 80's.
The narratives we were fed - and how deeply we absorbed them.
The ways they have shaped our beliefs, our behaviours, our relationships.
All of it plays out internally, whether we realise it or not.
The Cycle of Generations
Generation after generation endures, each believing they have had it the hardest - or that they will be the ones to finally make things better.
We tell ourselves we have learned.
We raise children who we hope will do better.
We strive for evolution, for growth, for change.
And yet... here we are again.
Facing war.
Facing carnage.
Facing deep disharmony and sorrow.
The Question We Must Ask
So the real question becomes:
Are we at peace within ourselves?
Are we awakening to a day when the blinkers fall away, and we see the truth in all its raw clarity?
Or are we still participating in a collective illusion - something akin to The Emperor's New Clothes - where we have grown so comfortable with what we are fed that we walk, knowingly or unknowingly, toward our undoing?
The Human Shadow
Perhaps this is the shadow we carry as humanity.
A fire that has burned since the very first flicker of human awareness.
We hold immense potential - yet so often squander it, caught in the quagmire of beliefs, conditioning, and unconscious patterns.
We find ourselves:
- Always searching
- Reconciling
- Building
- Destroying
- Blaming
- Wanting
- Grabbing
As Within, So Without
The war without is also the war within.
We are capable of so much more. Perhaps what what we are witnessing - both internally and globally - is a great purging. A release of millennia of generational trauma, carried through families, bloodlines, and the very fabric of our being.
All leading us, eventually, to a singular point.
A zero point.
Where we finally remember:
We are one.
We can coexist.
We can choose to light a fire that warms - rather than destroys.
Choosing Peace
So as the heat rises within me once more, I begin to understand.
My internal reactions are not separate from the external world. They are reflections of it.
As above, so below.
As within, so without.
And in that awareness, I make a choice:
I choose peace within myself.
I accept all that I am - my flaws, my shadows, my beauty, my joy.
I hold onto the belief that there is a way forward. That all of this, somehow, leads us toward harmony.
Perhaps not yet.
Perhaps the road is still long.
But one day... I believe.
Footnote: A Simple Truth
Darkness is simply the absence of light.
So shine your light - wherever and whenever you can.
Choose kindness.
Because the vibration of kindness will always, eventually, overcome hate.
Every single time. Even if, in the moment, you cannot yet see how.
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