Living in the New Now

There’s never going to be a New Normal

Light between the trees / Photo by RS

The New Now is right in front of our faces. The personal is universal, and the universal is personal. The time is now. We are all one human family.

Recent news in the New Now: A murderous tyrant invades and attempts to steal a country before dawn’s early light. He sent badly trained murderous soldiers across the border and David stood up to Goliath. Whapped the tyrant in the eye with a rock the size of a boulder. Clocks in the town square began running backwards. More senseless mass shootings than you can count happened, every single week—elementary school kids were murdered by weapons of war—we stood up, said hell no, enough is enough! Something was finally done about it. Sadly, not enough. Big money spoke, and taking these weapons of war away from easy reach didn’t happen. Once again. Mass shootings in the hate crime category by domestic terrorists are still the order of the day. The mob violently stormed the Capitol, killing and wounding as the day of insurrection went on. Many were held accountable. Many were not. Before the midterms, a tweet was tweeted, then deleted, then retweeted in another context. The cold civil war has been placed on the front burner. Murdering drag queens and targeting the electrical grid is now part of the war. The blue wall held back a red mirage that was supposed to be a wave. Women's fundamental healthcare rights were stolen in the dark of night by a tainted Supreme Court, and women marched and shouted from coast to coast. Saying no, no more, not this time. They stood up for the hard-won rights that were stolen away from them. They shouted, “We’ve come too far to let history go backwards. We’re not going to pass along a world that doesn’t include control of our bodies on to the next generation.” In the halls of Congress, far-right extremists fiddle around, preening for their social media moment while the planet burns.

Humanity is streaming across the border, through the cracks made in history.

History’s Hinge has swung wide open and opened us up. We’ve gone through a series of reboots over the past several years—Covid-19, a violent insurrection against the U.S. Government, the brutal and senseless invasion of Ukraine, the climate crisis ratcheting up a few degrees, malevolent authoritarian dictators who go so far as to threaten nuclear war, the global collapse of eco-systems—one can get the feeling the world’s trying to tell humanity something.

Change direction now? Change hearts and minds? Change the global narrative? Stop using fossil fuels? Survival of the human species, anyone?

Where is love, common sense, caring for each other and the world?

We’re living in a New Now. Living through history in the making. Watching a war half a world away with someone’s mobile phone always set on record.

Don’t believe the world must keep repeating the same lies, reinforcing the actions of the same terrible tyrants or corrupt politicians, accept the same horrific actions leading to countless senseless deaths.

You don’t have to believe any of these lies for one more second. It’s not serving life, democracy, freedom, or reality to keep believing falsehoods made of ignorance and wasted breath.

We’re not living in the kind of world where we have to agree with gaslighting, spewed by delusionary minds.

If you woke up today, in the New Now, you’ve proven to yourself how the world changes. Today isn’t yesterday. This Now isn’t yesterday’s Now. Now is the moment to live in a free world, in your own reality, following your own path, breaking from the lies of the past, and saying no to murderous control systems and yes to thinking your own thoughts.

Say no to the wrongheaded ones who want to keep the clocks running backwards. Say yes to the people with open hearts and minds.

The New Now has learned a few important lessons. The world finally understands this—all bullies are cowards at heart. Let’s put iron in our spines and stand up to fake lying leaders. Who needs them? Enough is enough! Bullies don’t control lives in the New Now. They are fading from history, becoming invisible as you read these words.

Change the path history’s on by standing up. Change how you experience the world. See it with new eyes. Reject all propaganda and lies, which never should’ve been normalized.

In the New Now, we’re living inside every moment—everywhen and everynow.

We are creating the history of these times.

The world was on pause, and it’s up and running again. (Even though the pandemic is still going on.) Let’s be clear. There’s never going to be a New Normal. It’s not even a thing to wish for. Stop saying it or even thinking it. Tell your local media stations to stop asking when we’ll be getting back to Normal. Never going to be such a thing, ever again.

The previous Normal left out too many human beings, who wanted to be let in. It’s the end of senseless social norms we were told to accept. Finally, the dust fell from our eyes, and with new-found clarity we saw through the big lies written in the sky.

The previous faulty Normal didn’t include teaching emotional intelligence and meditation to children, peace and prosperity as a basic human right, healthcare coverage for all, an end to the never-ending reign of dictators and tyrants the world over, putting an end to the American gun violence epidemic, saying yes to love and abundance for everyone, and saying no to ongoing senseless cycles of war.

Let’s create a reality where world peace is possible. How about it?

It's time to change laws, rules of governance, how many years supreme court justices can serve, and how much money politicians can take (in the form of legal bribery) from organizations and corporations.

It’s time to say yes to the future of our planet and say no to corporations run only with greed as the primary motivating factor.

It’s time to live in a land where when social change happens after decades of struggle, those changes can’t be reversed.

It’s time to promote and believe in the arts of the New Now. Books (start with reading books from a list of the most often banned books), paintings, poetry (we’re living in a new golden age of poetry), movement, music, multi-sensory art forms, photography, visionary dream-like movies and videos. Whatever you can imagine and create. Art forms are here to open up minds. It’s up to you. Always has been.

The New Now isn’t living in a sci-fi metaverse, it’s already in our hearts.

In the New Now, books and free thought aren’t banned by backwards-thinking humans in states where clocks are running backwards. If you’re afraid of books and thinking, and young people having open-minded thoughts, you must be in a constant state of inner terror, turmoil, and fear. Try taking a walk to relieve your stress. It’s recommended on the Internet.

In the New Now, education is a wide-open universe of unending knowledge. Taking in knowledge from books you choose to pick up and read is as essential as breathing. It’s an act of personal freedom. You can never learn too much, or read too many diverse and thought provoking and wondrous books. Reading a writer is entering the mind and world of another human being. There are more and more books being published every year. Banning books could literally drive one mad from over-thinking which wonderful new imaginative caring thoughts you can’t stand. Why do humans think they can possibly prevent others from becoming smarter through the power of reading? Add to that, an endless degree of trying to tamp down the mental growth of the youth, middle-aged, and seniors of our country. By attempting to prevent other humans from forming their own thoughts by reading books of their own choosing, you’ve spent a lot of energy on nothing you could’ve ever prevented in a million years. Why would anyone on Earth want to spend their time in such a fruitless pursuit? The war against ideas is never going to be won by the closed-minded. The power of the written word will prevail. Books open minds to new ideas, which is how humanity has always moved forward—with open, imaginative minds.

In the New Now, human rights and personal rights are one, and they can’t be stolen by corrupt politicians, or by pitting one color-coded state against another. Let’s all admit racism has always been wrongheaded, horrific, ignorant, and it’s long past time to change minds and hearts for good. Hate has only served to keep hearts blindly hating other humans based upon skin color, sexual orientation, religious misinterpretations, social customs, and a whole list of other socially backwards factors—meant only to divide cultures and start wars.

The New Now wants you to start by looking inside, and making friends with your own tender heart. Be open to new ideas. Become larger in spirit and in curiosity. Practice generosity. Shift our culture forward into the future. Help to create a place where our expansive natures have a place to breathe freely and become generous, peaceful, empathetic human beings.

Russell C. Smith writes https://russellcsmith.substack.com