(New Series: Cafe Between Worlds: Post #5)
Barack Obama and Emma have walked away from Einstein’s table to find a quiet place to talk at the Cafe Between Worlds. She has been telling him how much she hates people who support military-style weapons being available to ordinary citizens… and how much she hates Trump and wishes he would disappear.
Obama leans over to Emma and continues their conversation:
I know that it is so tempting to want to destroy Trump. But do we want to be like him?
Emma:
He’s destroying our rights. He’s destroying our democracy. He is inciting white nationalists to murder so that mass killing is now tolerated without anyone in his Republican Party or in the White House caring enough to make new laws to protect us from being murdered in Walmart or while we are having fun at night… Our country is losing its spirit… its freedom.
Obama:
I completely agree. We are in crisis as a nation. The things we have counted on to represent and define our country… are falling away. We have not known or even imagined that a frequency of mass killings would ever be incited by a president we would have elected as a country.
We are also at risk of losing our diversity coupled with our benevolent hearts… as a country. We are at risk of losing our understanding and our compassion for one another. These qualities are necessary for us to hold our freedom as a nation. The question is: what can we do to hold these qualities so that no one can take them from us.
Emma:
Kill the guy who is threatening us.
Obama:
So how can we then differentiate ourselves from the kind of behavior we abhor in him if we try to destroy him? He is not just a concept or a viewpoint. He is human. Even if he is mostly in his negative ego, he is a human.
Emma:
He is a horrible human
Obama:
Yes, he is behaving horribly with devastating consequences. But if we stoop to his level, aren’t we then allowing him to determine the nature of the fight? In ancient tribes, when they wanted to ostracize one of their own members… when they wanted them dead to their tribe because the person had done something nefarious to its members… they would not give that person any attention whatsoever. They would act as if the person didn’t exist.
We can’t do this literally because he has too much power now… but we can change our focus. We can call him out for his devastating influence on our country and on innocent people…such as heart-wrenching alt-right massacres occurring more frequently. We could tell our congressmen we have had enough deaths, enough horror with how our president acts in our country as he gives those violence-inciting rallies… and in the world, such as being friends and ‘falling in love’ with a murderous dictator.
Then we could take ourselves out of the resonance that feeds him … by changing how we focus with him… and that resonance would not hold together anymore.
What would happen if ‘we the people’… stopped giving Trump attention in the news media, in social media… for his egregious lies… Wonder about– what would happen if no one repeated his lies, but instead we just ignored him. And how about his manipulative disguise of ‘acquiescence’ where he turns around 180 degrees with his opinions, when nothing else works for him? Wonder about– what would happen if we get that he is manipulating to get more attention…and ignore this in the news and social media. He does most everything to get attention, and he doesn’t care if it is negative. But if he gets minimal attention… and instead we give our attention to each other… then we are building up each other instead of him.
I don’t mean that we should ignore his impact. I mean that we can feel intensely about what he is doing… and then we need to detach ourselves- focus on something else that is hopeful… and act from this… rather than acting from our fear or hate of him.
Emma:
Then what do we do to protect our country?
Obama:
Well, that resonance… that standing wave of resonance will break down… and lots of things working to service the president’s destructive agenda will stop working as they have been… There will be more chaos, and we need chaos to make the changes we want to make. Next, we need to focus on something else. It is up to us individually: we might want to research new forms of energy for our planet or what happens when people become more compassionate and understanding with one another…
We could also run for local office… or volunteer somewhere to help another person… or participate in workshops that inspire us to be the person we know we can be, but haven’t had the courage to live… We can join meetups or other gatherings to celebrate life or explore some areas of interest we have. We could go to areas that have been devastated by violence and be there to help… to care…
And we could join campaigns that encourage dignity and vision… campaigns that have character and integrity… We could work to prevent tragedy from climate change… or to protect wildlife or animals at risk. We could join a meditation group or take a class… We could travel around the world meeting people… learning how to listen and understand… what matters to them so that we can help them have more hope…
The most important focus is that we do whatever we choose… with an intention to become more caring, compassionate, and understanding people who are becoming more fascinated and enchanted with our lives… We become people who have taken our power back from the man who has been terrorizing our country… We stop becoming his pawns…
Soosi comes over to Obama and Emma. His four arms and hands are flowing together as though conducting Erik Satie’s Gymnopedie No. 1 Symphony. His luminous blue-white spider body is pulsing… He looks into the eyes of Emma. She expected herself to be scared… Instead, she feels soothed. She could feel how weary she has been.
Nineteen years old is too young for me to be so weary.
Soosi offers Emma some tea and she accepts.
The tea Soosi is pouring, looks more like a living liquid potion rather than a tea. It has a golden hue with streams of green-blue, yellow, and red running through it. Emma walks over to a small table by herself to drink the ‘tea’. She wants time to contemplate her conversation with President Obama. As she drinks, she knows this is some kind of elixir, but she trusts Soosi. He soothes her soul.
As she drinks the elixir, everything around her turns into waves and the waves pull her into their current. Somehow, she knows to let go… and just let the current take her…
Emma senses herself to be somewhere on earth when she opens her eyes, looks around, and then thinks to herself:
There are people with rifles and horrible guns everywhere around me. Why am I here. I’m scared. I hate them. They killed my friends in school. I hate these kind of people. I hate them so much I can hardly breathe.
A guy about 18 years old walks up to Emma:
Do you want to buy a gun?
Emma:
No! I am insulted by your question. Why would I want to buy a gun? What do you think I’m going to do with it? My name is Emma, just so you know.
18 Year Old Guy:
You could protect yourself from the commie socialists who are going to try to take our freedoms away.
Emma:
How can you think that way? It is you who takes my freedoms away. Someone like you gunned down my friends at school. Someone like you mowed down elementary school kids. Someone like you gunned down people in Walmart and at a night club while they are having fun. Don’t talk to me about commie socialists taking our freedoms away!
18-year-old guy:
I’m sorry your friends got killed. I didn’t kill them. I didn’t kill any of those people and I would never do something like that. But I don’t want anyone to take my guns away. And I don’t want them to take my rights to be a free citizen away. That’s why I support our president Trump.
Emma:
How can you support a misogynist man who gives billionaires huge tax breaks and gives you pittance and in addition he places tariffs on other countries’ goods so that we can afford to buy less and less of what we want and many of the farmers, auto makers, and other businesses are in crisis. And do you believe that it is ok to exploit women… to treat them like barbie dolls and hang them on your arms like they are your property… or to humiliate them because they don’t match your measurements or age requirements? Do you think its right for a man to decide for women what their rights are? And tell me why you would ever support such a horrible person who would separate babies from their mothers and put children or anyone in cages with almost no food or water and no place to sleep.
18-year-old guy:
Wow, I can’t keep up with your questions. I don’t believe those things are really happening. Trump believes in me. He talks to me. No president or other official has even noticed that I exist. You’re more educated probably. I work for a pest company. Once, I even drank the liquid we use just to prove to a customer that it is safe.
Emma:
Oh god! I can’t stomach this. Don’t you understand that he doesn’t care about you. He is using you and you are falling for his deceptive seduction. He is pulling you in… using your honest desire to be someone who matters in this world. I get that. You do matter and so do I. But you have fallen into his spell.
18-year-old guy:
Maybe you have fallen into a spell. You have these naive ideas that set you up to support a government that is going to take all your rights away and control what you eat, what job you can have. It’s going to take all your guns and protection away so that it can take over your life. At least I’ll have my guns to fight them. You are the one being seduced.
Emma:
I wouldn’t allow that. But you actually support a man who has lost almost all respect from the entire free world… because he has caused so much damage and because he lies to them. He lies to everyone, right in front of our faces even when he knows we know he is lying. He does this because someone like you will be listening and will actually believe him because he knows that he has you snowed.
18-year-old guy:
If what you say is true, then what hope do I have? Someone like you would never be my friend. What future do I have?
Emma:
That’s not true that I wouldn’t be your friend.
18-year-old guy:
Why would you? You are educated and probably come from a wealthy happy home.
Emma:
My father immigrated from Venezuela. Your president would now keep him in a cell indefinitely and if I am there as his child, he would separate me from him and ship me off to some strangers home where I would never be found, at best … but probably they would throw me in a room with hundreds of other kids ripped from their families and even dying from diseases and malnutrition in one small room.
18-year-old guy:
Well, I think you are exaggerating but I get your point. We can’t just let everyone in our country.
Emma:
No one wants that. We just want to do things in a humane and compassionate way.
18-year-old guy:
Why would you ever consider having me as a friend? I still don’t believe you.
Emma:
I think we may have something in common. Because my father is Venezuelan, I am seen as less than a real citizen of any worth by those white nationalists that you probably hang out with. But I can see how you feel the same way… with people who have more education, or ‘position’, or more money… You don’t feel like you have worth to them.
18-year-old guy:
You make a good point. What do we do about that though?
Emma:
I think we need to find ways to reach out to one another… and maybe start by listening and caring… trying to understand what each one of us is really trying to say. I don’t think we say what we really want to say… because it never feels safe enough.
Emma walks up to the 18-year-old guy with tears in her eyes. He reaches out. They hold one another … Emma realizes she doesn’t know his name. She looks into his eyes and asks him if he will tell her his name.
18-year-old guy:
My name is John.
He can’t quite see Emma’s face from his blurred eyes.
Emma:
John, would you like to help me gather a group together where we would all listen to one another instead of just spout out our dogma? We could let the people on one side talk while the other side listened. And then switch. Then each side could give the other side suggestions on how to get what they want in a way that doesn’t terrify the other side that is opposite them. We could keep doing that until maybe new creative solutions could just pop through… creative ideas that no one on either side has thought about…
John:
Thanks for asking for my name, Emma. Yes, I want to do this with you.
Everything begins to wave for Emma… the waves become larger as the moment disappears… and she moves again in the current of the force of those waves…
Emma opens her eyes as she is now standing in front of a doorway in one of the walls of the Cafe Between Worlds. Jordon is in front of her.
Jordon:
I’ve been looking for you. Where is that faerie, Finard. I want to thank him for going rogue. I learned something about how I have gotten myself in so much trouble by going rogue. It’s not that I want to stop doing that… but I want to find ways to go rogue where I don’t keep getting so hurt and put myself at risk like my friend who got shot by the police.
I still want to go to into faerie with Finard. I want to see what guys my age are like in faerie. Maybe we can form a force of some kind… that could help change the world.
Emma feels overwhelmed with her return and with Jordon jumping in so fast. Jordon notices that she is not present with him and takes off as he catches a glimpse of his new faerie friend, Finard.
copyright © 2019, Lyn Marsh, Ph.D. all rights reserved. You may not reproduce written materials without permission from Lyn Marsh, Ph.D.
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