Shh? No! Speak up!

Though peace is often a topic discussed, it often takes people like Mimi with projects like Peace Globes to cause us to sit down and really give more than a cursory thought, leave it to others who know best kind of attitude. Writing about peace last week and trying to bring back my work habits – long since tossed aside brought this thought to mind today:

How can we expect to win battles for peace in the world, when we do not bother to win self battles?

Perhaps, the real first step toward winning world peace is to face our war with self, to face why we:

• ignore our bodies’ overall health
• ignore our need to rest mentally
• ignore our need to balance work and pleasure
• ignore our need to help others

Those battles are notorious for being hard to win. Had we more practice fighting those battles, pulling in inner strength toward a goal so very vital to a decent life on earth, then those skills could be applied to fighting battles for peace. It all really does start within.

I am battling, they have always been weaker battles, hopefully this one will be fought longer and harder. I’d love to apply those skills to the rest of my life - and fighting for peace.

If you see it as I do, care to join me in fighting a better, smarter, more efficient battle? Or just, at least, going beyond just declaring war on bad habits, and start fighting them with the intention of winning?

Yes, it is our responsibility to ourselves and the world to brainstorm ways to find peace - and then act on them.   

 My words I felt worth repeating are found by clicking on the globe.Mimi’s most recent post summarizing all her research this past month on wars is found here: Dona Nobis Pacem ~ A Revolution of Words.Links for other writers on peace there. Perhaps reading some of them will take your thoughts on peace in a different direction, one of can do, rather than frustration and hopeless? 

Mimi’s Peace Globes are flying… Many of us want peace - I would say all, but there are a few who prefer to stir things up in a negative way, hate driven? Self-loathing; a missing link to a thing one might label heart and kindness in their chemistry? I don’t know, but I know that because of the strength of the few, their ability to throw a wrench in the works that seems to have the uncanny knack to stop “production of peace”, the many (all of the rest of us — a LOT of many) have to work harder and constantly at combating this disruption of peace. I don’t believe there is one way of both preventing them from disrupting or from repairing the damage they cause to society as a whole. Individually, we need to do what we can, we need to use our strengths to join in the constant battle - and at the same time shore up our weaknesses, our loss of resolve, our frustration that becomes (or became) so great that it becomes anger and blinds us from the tools we have in our arsenal.

I read years ago, when I was more impressionable, that negative energy is stronger than positive energy, that when in a crowd, the negative people can easily incite riots because of that. Riots scare the heck out of me, I think of them like runaway cattle, crushing and destroying, innocents killed or maimed because of. I don’t know if science still spouts that fact, but I do know that true or not, to combat negative energy it takes an inordinate amount of work and it is either do that work or be absorbed and controlled by the negative.

It is personally extremely frustrating when a point as important as living in peace is not accepted by the masses. No, in truth, it is extremely frustrating when it is not accepted by even one single human being. And it is only in writing this that I realize HOW important that one person is, for that ONE person can spread that negative energy to the many. Just as their negative energy can wear us down, why could not our positive energy, IF IN MASS, wear them down? It may not wear down those that truly hate, that have a major screw loose in their brains, that loathe themselves so much they don’t see the good in a single human life. It may not, but it will influence those that are teetering, that just need a little dose of respect, that need knowledge, that need someone to explain life and the benefits of peace and kindness in a way they understand.

That last paragraph, how to get there is both simple and so very complicated. So many ways to reach people, so many people, though, that are not reachable by normal every day words or your explanation, or mine, or his. That is where blogging comes in. There are so many millions blogging, we DON’T all think alike, one of us may have a different idea… And that is where Mimi comes in:

• she is giving us another excuse to try to get the point, even just the thought, of peace across. It is but one way, but it will get through to at least one person — and one more is more than no more — and one more tips the scale that tiny bit toward peace.
• she is using repetition, asking us to participate in peace more than once, creating a “Universal” brand, Peace Globe
• she is bringing the word, “PEACE” to our minds
• she is doing something,
• she is asking us to do something, to take a step forward, to scheme, to brainstorm toward peace

Any step forward is a good step, even if retreating comes later, or we make detours along the way. You have different strengths, different ideas, you are, like Mimi, like me, like your aunt and uncle, your neighbor, your unborn child: one of the many. Brainstorm on P e a c e, I dare you. (And if you are one that plays opposites, I dare you NOT to brainstorm on P e a c e.)

I’m flying a peace globe again on June 4th. It may mean nothing to some, it may be but an opportunity to link for others, a game for yet others, but it means the world to others, so for them, I will post mine. It is your choice to Shh? or No! Speak up! And if you chose Shh?, you can always decide later, that No! Speak up! is your new course of action. It took me a while to get there, too.

If you cannot do a job with integrity, it is not the job for you. Find another one.

Side note: Just because some are going along with you does not mean even they have not lost respect for you - and I bet for some of you, if you took the time to look inside, you would find you have lost respect for yourself as well.

Why not earn it back? If not, get another job.

Community Emergency Response Team - a good thing. I am still trying to figure out how I could work for a phone company, live in Florida, and listen to the news and NOT know about them until I moved to Washington state in 2004. . .  (NOTE: this is also published on TumbledWords.com)

Though just normal people (ok, normal, above-average, and chickens like me), those who have attended classes and done a mock disaster drill, however tiny, earned their certificate, and many have signed up to become team members. Across the country, C.E.R.T. members have already proven their worth during natural disasters in communities for years.

In many cases they become the first responders, walking from house to house or business to business before the professionals can get there. Obviously there are limits to what they can do, but there is plenty they can do! They are trained:

• from basic first aid such as stopping bleeding and making splints out of whatever is available,
• to putting out small fires
• to turning off gas and water
• to removing those they can from further harm.
• Not to be left out is instruction in the basic psychology of how people, including the rescuers, may react.

Another C.E.R.T. function is to get information to the command center on what the needs are of their local areas and how many people are in such dangerous situations that they need be rescued by professionals, when heavy equipment is needed.Leon and I took the classes and earned our certificates. For him to learn it is just a normal thing. For me to even consider taking it has probably completely thrown the universe, for I am a complete chicken who gets nauseous at just about anything — and it was my idea to take the classes. Yes, I was probably the weakest link in the class, and yes, I mainly took it so that I could, at least, know enough not to need rescuing! And honestly, I am sure several members of our class were glad I didn’t live in their neighborhood or that at least when Leon was home one of us would be coordinated enough. . . but!

But! I, at least, now know:

• how to use a fire extinguisher without having to stop to read the directions
• how not to use a fire hose
• how to turn off gas and water and electric
• how to assess who needs immediate help and who can wait (triage)
• how to use common objects to make a splint
• ways to stop bleeding
• how to move people when possible without injuring ourselves
• how to work as a team with people we don’t know

Sure, a lot of us know some of this and the other helpful things they teach, but refreshers are always a good thing. . . And I can tell you that just a few years later, I need the refresher. I can only hope, if I need the information it is lurking in my head… kind of like the self-protection moves I learned in Tae Kwon Do classes years ago. Many of you are not like me, you will retain more, especially if you go into it without fear.

For the record, C.E.R.T. members are reminded to put themselves first again and again, because if they try to do something they are not able to do with their skills they become not ONLY just one more person for the professionals to rescue, but one less person to rescue/help the many. That is something we all, as everyday people need to remember even in life’s daily emergencies.

By the way, those large X’s with writing you have seen on doors in disaster news clips. . . they give a lot of needed information to the professionals, including triage information. . . and many of those were made by C.E.R.T. volunteers as they got to their neighbors and friends.

Check it out, even if you are just a chicken like me. . . you may be the very chicken that makes a difference and people may then find out the answer to, “Why did the chicken cross the road?”

——-

Just put C.E.R.T. in your search engine of choice or call your local community’s emergency management group. . . Our small town just had two classes of 17 people each. . . that is 34 more people who now are part of the solution rather than the problem that year - and each year is similar.

Thank you to:

• the Department of Emergency Management of Monroe, Washington, for offering the classes to us
  and teaching much of the class — and answering and repeating the answers - and explaining with patience
• the members of the Police and Fire Departments who shared their time and patiently answered all of our questions
• all those that have attended in an attempt to better themselves, prepare to help others, and encourage each other

C.E.R.T. is a good thing. A very good thing.