“We are telling our kids that nature is in the past and it probably doesn’t count anymore, the future is in electronics, the boogeyman is in the woods, and playing outdoors is probably illicit and possibly illegal.”
-Richard Louv
In honor of the grass roots holiday that will be celebrated tomorrow, April 20, I’ve decided to take the day off. A whole day set aside to reflect on life, the universe, and everything. 24 consecutive hours of not allowing the encroaching entropy of our allegedly modern world to infect much of anything at all. You know that humans have survived for at least hundreds of thousands of years without Facebook, right?
I will not be paying attention to the media tomorrow. I will not be paying attention to social media tomorrow. I will give not a single care for politics, or economics, or systemic racism, or any other such nonsense. Furthermore, I will not support any of the trans-national corporations that have been willfully poisoning us for decades by ingesting any of their over-processed, minimally nutritious, morally empty concocted garbage.
Sorry McDonalds. Sorry ConAgra and Corteva. Sorry Monsanto. Sorry Facebook and Twitter. Sorry Google. Sorry Amazon. Sorry international banksters. Sorry WEF and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Have I left anyone out? Obviously, I have… and I’m not sorry about it.
Tomorrow, I plan to spend the day outside of my societally approved domicile(weather permitting, of course) not spending a single minute thinking about any of this bullshit that the global predator class wants us to invest our attention and intention into. When was the last time you spent a whole day just enjoying the breeze, or watching all the little critters of the world go about their business? I’ve decided that it’s been too long.
We need real holidays again, not the grotesquely packaged consumerist spending sprees that we have been led to believe holidays are supposed to encompass. The value of the time that we spend on such things is not directly proportional to the price tag of the “gift” you just bought for whomever. Material objects are only supposed to be representations of concepts and emotions that cannot physically manifest in this world of three dimensions that we inhabit. And a representation should never be confused as being the thing itself.
For me, tomorrow will be about the immutable nature of this universe, and how that nature persists despite the best laid plans of men. That is what holidays were always meant to be about: markers in time that could serve as reference points, rites of passage, and allegorical instruction. And those markers can be used for a multitude of purposes, not the least of which is knowing where you have come from, as well as revealing the direction that you are currently headed in.
So, if you feel that you are brave enough, join me tomorrow in saying no… even if it’s just for one day. Say no to the government. Say no to the talking heads. Turn off the TV and turn off the phone. Say no to the poison in all the forms that get shoved into our faces every single minute of every single day. Go for a hike or a bike ride without your phone. Make your own meals from whole ingredients. Find something positive to give your energy to that may actually allow you to produce something of value in your own life. Or anything else you can reason out that will make your world a better place, as long as it doesn’t infringe anyone else’s right to do the same. Try it, just for one day; you might just discover how good it makes you feel at the end of the day.
We were born to be free, just like the plant that tomorrow’s festivities are based upon. Freedom is fundamental to existence, subservience is not.
Smoke ’em if you got ’em, and happy holidays.
