Celebrate Interdependence

 Express, ~11" x 12", acrylic on 140lb paper

Today, on the 4th of July, most Americans will be celebrating.

Many know why, many have forgotten.

Most have forgotten.

We celebrate our freedom.  But it is a holiday celebrating freedom from something.  As long as there is something to which we can be confined, we are never truly free.

Today, I offer an alternative.

Let us celebrate hard-fought battles and the honest morals that created the division.  Let us acknowledge all that we have strived for, all that has brought us to this place.  Because this place - this here and now that we find ourselves?  No matter which country or time or street address or mindset or shelter or star in the sky we list as our home, this place is pretty beautiful.

Let's be thankful for what brought us here.

But as we celebrate, let us not forget that everyone else is also here.  We all experience our own "here".  My here happens to be called Bloomington, IN on Tuesday, July 4th in a gray chair.  Someone else's here could be Paris, France on Wednesday, September 14th.  Both are valid Here's.

Let's not try to decide whose is better.

Let's stop fighting over whether my here should be mine instead of yours and whether your here is truly yours and ....

it's maddening, no?

Thank you, soldiers, for your fight.  Thank you, peace-makers, for your awareness and determination.  Your here's are just as valid as mine, and I thank you for helping bring me to mine.

I do not want to be independent from anyone's here and now.  Without one right or wrong "here", we are all interdependent.  We are all just here.

One drop of water in the ocean relies on the others around it to stay in place, and yet, who can say the exact location of that drop?  Many "here's", one ocean.

One here.

Let's celebrate.

Namaste.