The Center
There is a reaction for every action around us. Not so much in us. The laws of physics don’t apply to most human beings. Human beings act and rarely have reactions. This is wrong on so many levels.
Most, if not all of your activities, are actions. You eat, you sleep, you go to work, you read, you talk. You act. You conform common values, ways of doing things you were educated, or you copy from others. No matter the level of complexity of your actions, from CEO to bus driver, you act. Most of your actions that provide you with food, money to buy things you don’t really need, the arbitrary forms of power that you exert over your kind have no meaning even for the smallest units in the flow of time.
The simple way to understand actions is to define what a reaction is. To react means to have an understanding of a specific time and place. The things that exist and have no consciousness, like a rock, react. You hit a rock; the rock exists in time and space indifferent to your action. The beings that exist and have a consciousness are capable of reactions too. To react means to create something new, to be aware of space, time, environment, other human beings as you are in the Center.
These are some of the moments when you are in the Center:
- Painting, writing.
- The feeling in your stomach as your child takes the first step and the sudden realization of the responsibility you have towards the creation of another human being as a reaction to your genetic imperative.
- That undefined certitude of your tennis racket touching a ball that will win you the game.
Reacting as understanding the moment, being present, is all you get. Not being aware of these moments or deciding that the best action is to ignore your reactions allows you to survive in the world we live in now. And this is wrong.
In one of those seconds when you find yourself in the Center you could become aware that:
- The device you use contains minerals mined with the help and blood of children while the owner or CEO of the company that creates that device is a despicable human being.
- You dedicate years of your life to acquire a form or another of wealth while giving to your kids only 10% of your time.
- You realize that the world around you is based on abhorrent inequality, with 1% of the population amassing wealth that leaves all other human beings in a state of perpetual slavery.
Reacting as understanding the moment, being present, is all you get. For the rest of your lifetime, you just act.
- You act by deciding to ignore the blood and human beings wasted to build your smartphone.
- You keep working and promise to spend the weekend or a later time with your kids until it’s too late.
- You act with awe towards the “successful” people and frame them as role models as they continue to take advantage of legal systems that can’t keep up with their ingenuity in making only them and their shareholders rich.
You’ll tell me that there are exceptions and I know that. I know there are people that try to change things and do the best from a bad situation every day. I know. I also know a human being on this planet dies every second because we act in ignorance.
It’s wrong because we don’t put us, ALL OF US, in the Center.