the answer

the answer

waits patiently

underneath the layers

of all the things you think

you already know

~

These words came as a message to me from my own self.  Or from god, however you want to put it.  It might have also come from a guardian angel that I tend to keep very busy; or maybe from my diseased mother. It could have also been one of my indigenous ancestors. Does it matter?

The things we think we know are where these kind of answers, the kind that tries to give explanations about where a person’s inspiration actually comes from.  We want to keep our reality safely in place so we give it a face and a name – and a responsibility. It has the responsibility to take care of us, protect us, change our lives, give us a destiny, have an imposing will about our day-to-day business as well as likes and dislikes.

But where does the answer really come from? At this moment we need one – and we need it now.  We need an answer for Mexico. We need an answer for climate change, the war on drugs, mass incarceration, illness, messed up educational system, backwards religions, inhumane treatment of workers from underdeveloped countries.  We need an answer and we need it now.  But where is it going to come from? I can tell you where it won’t come from. It won’t come from anything we have already done before.  It won’t come from war.  It won’t come from people dividing themselves into “sides” and being against the other side.  It won’t come from a desire for revenge and punishment.

It will come from a flower that is able to bloom in darkness.  It will come from a heart that cracks open and lets out a poem.  It will come from the monster that reveals its broken self to itself and fights no more.

The answer exists.  It will emerge like the simplest and most obvious thing we’ve ever thought of.  We’ll feel dumb for not thinking of it earlier.  Then we’ll forgive ourselves, because we will understand that we couldn’t see the answer with a closed heart.  We couldn’t see the answer while we insisted that what we already knew was what there was to know.