Meditations On A Poem By Caitlin Johnstone

If you have not yet read it, I highly suggest this wonderful poem by Caitlin Johnstone. Her book Woke is never too far from my side and I often reread it and meditate upon it. I was recently doing so and would like to add to what she said in my own non-poetic way.

Have the courage to speak, yes, but also have the courage to feel. Because the bastards not only want to shut you up, they want to shut you down. Sadists are like that. They not only want to control your behavior, they want to control your very thoughts and emotions. They do not permit you your own feelings. Your feelings are an assault upon their mastery. They will seek to convince you your very feelings betray what a worthless person you are. Feel!

And you ARE tempted to shut down your feelings, aren’t you? You see the horrible things the bastards are doing — the killing of innocents, the perversion of childhood, the destruction of forests, the defaming of truth-tellers — and it all becomes too much to deal with, so you look away, pretend it isn’t happening and distract yourself with lesser things. You create your own little niche where you feel you can have some impact, and in so doing abandon the idea of being powerful on the more important issues. You create for yourself a smaller — tiny — world, because when you open up your feelings all you get is pain.