FEAR IS THE TOOL OF TYRANTS : LETTER TO THE WORLD

Dear World,
Your very lives, the fact that you EXIST honors me. I am honored to share this wee planet with you, each of you. We are ALL but space travelers, hurtling along TOGETHER through the vast universe at mind-boggling speeds, clinging to this blue globe, sharing the same everything... the same sun, stars, moon, resources, world events, seas, atmosphere. We ARE in this thing together, like it or not. We are ALL part of the same lot, of homo sapiens sapiens, so again, like it or not, there we are!

I don't expect nor want you to agree with me on anything! I don't care if your views are as different from mine as night and day. I don't have one molecule in my body that would EVER want you to "see things my way"! How dull that would be, if we all agreed on everything, without subtle nuances that define us as INDIVIDUALS!
I can't imagine ANY of you without 'quirks', without 'idiosyncrasies', without preferring a certain food, drink, color over another, likely NOT the ones I prefer, but how very interesting that we are so different and yet of the same 'family'! How embraceable are our differences! They set us apart, perhaps, but they are NOT things that should cause us FEAR! They should inspire a deep sense of AWE within us, AWE, yes, that we each are so RARE, so UNIQUE, so amazingly remarkable, ALL OF US!
I salute our differences, World!

These are the most incredible times! Fraught with danger, but full of wonder, our world has become a place that seems very hard to live in, but, because of our technology, we are also brought closer to one another in many ways. I wanted to utilize that new-found closeness to send this letter to the world's people, to those, like me, who are in it, wondering what we can do, what we can possibly do to understand one another, to make things 'better' between us, to improve our global relationships. 
I am no longer young, but grown old. I have great hope for understanding at this amazing time in my life.

There seems little hope that our governments, our 'officials' will ever have the presence of mind, the compassion, the honor, the wisdom, or the courage to reach out in any meaningful way to bridge these ever-widening gaps in our understanding of each other. It almost seems the 'powers', the 'rulers' of each of our nations want anything BUT for us to continuously be at each others throats!
They seem to pay very little heed to we who have either helped them attain their 'power' or helped them keep it, ignoring what is best for the WHOLE in favor of what the few seem to be driven to GET. They seem to be eager to TAKE, but balk at GIVING BACK to us even a fraction of what we have given them. They ignore the best interests of the WHOLE. They "lead" us into confrontations and situations few of us agree to being in. Many (most?) of our 'leaders' seem motivated by GREED, and by the need to DOMINATE.

We who are not flailing about in the stormy ocean of politics, we who are not concerned with incessantly winning "pissing contests", with one-upmanship, with the flawed 'logic' of "mine is bigger than yours", we who are not given to the warped ideal of SUPREMACY, to the damning LIES of "manifest destiny" nor "empire-building", we who are not at all intent on DECEPTION in order to "WIN" at any cost, we who are simply engaged in LIFE, in LIVING may often find our thoughts turned to something like, "HOW can we bridge these gaps of understanding? WHAT are others thinking, really? HOW do people in other nations view me, my nation, my beliefs, and WHY do they see it that way? Do they know that I am NOT like my derisive "leaders"? Do they know that I am hoping that they and I all have good lives, simply have enough of what we need to sustain us?"

Forgive me, or don't, for stating things so plainly, but I merely want to live out my short time here on the third planet from the sun in peace, in health, with enough of all that is "good" to see me through, but I wish to do so with HONOR, and in TRUTH. 

HONOR... it is such a simple word, but one we seem to have relegated to some unspoken realm of antiquated terminology, a word that exists without pure definition anymore.
HONOR is our individual assertion to one another that we can be trusted to be WORTHY of respect, that we will ALWAYS be exactly what we tell others we are. Honor is in ACTION, in how we truly LIVE our lives, so honor is NOT mere words that SAY we are this or that.
HONOR IS A LIVING ENTITY.
It behaves from within us, describes who we are, bridles our human passions, negates lies we may be tempted to tell, and defines us TO OURSELVES. Honor NEVER lies about anything. Honor separates real human beings from "monsters". Who can even call themselves a human being who has no HONOR?
How can one maintain any semblance of honor without daily evaluation, without gazing long, long WITHIN, to see if anything has minutely changed within us that affects our true honor? If we cannot be trusted to KNOW OURSELVES, to keep a watchful eye on SELF, to police our OWN thoughts, to ask and ask and ask, "IS THAT TRUE? IS THAT CORRECT THINKING?", then, please, let NO ONE trust us, let no one see us as real human beings!
Let us go to our graves knowing that we were NOT honorable, that we did not EVER really  fit into the 'family of mankind'... man-KIND! There is nothing HUMANE nor KIND about a person without honor!

Dear World, I am not the least concerned with meaningless things, like race, or "class", or if my culture is more "advanced" than another's. I don't care if your nation produces more, uses more, contributes more or less than mine. We are NOT our nations...we are INDIVIDUALS. We are individuals who make our own, very personal daily choices for ourselves. We alone decide how we will react to, accept or reject EVERYTHING that we find in each new day. We can't "blame" others for our OWN choices, for others are merely doing as we do!

EVEN WITH A LOADED GUN AGAINST MY HEAD, EVEN UNDER THREAT OF DEATH OR TORTURE, I ALONE DECIDE FOR ME! NO ONE CAN FORCE ME INTO OR OUT OF ANYTHING! I CAN, I DO, CHOOSE DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR! I CAN NEVER LIE TO SELF, THEREFORE, HOW CAN I LIE TO ANY OF YOU? I ALONE DECIDE FOR ME!

FEAR is what our "leaders" use AGAINST us! FEAR is the whip they use to drive us at each other! FEAR is what they seem to hope we each accept, day after day, year after year, so they constantly SCARE us with sordid tales, with media propaganda, with THEIR version of "truth" which is almost NEVER the truth at all. They INVENT enemies for us, they CREATE the things they want us to FEAR! They tell us what to think, what to believe, what goals we "should" want to have, and they HERD us with FEAR! They do all they can to strip us of our INDIVIDUALITY, of our HONOR.
It seems to me that FEAR is what runs nations anymore. We are taught in America to FEAR you who live in certain areas of this world. We are taught to be AFRAID of certain cultures, of certain beliefs, of certain PEOPLE. Our media helps instill in Americans an unbelievable  FEAR, but some of us have long ago REJECTED that fear-mongering, that propaganda that daily assails our senses to continuously BE AFRAID of some of you out there in other nations.

Dear World, I REJECT FEAR!

I merely want to UNDERSTAND you, and hope to acquaint myself with what you, as individuals THINK, HOW you think, why you think that way, and help you understand what and why I also think as I do. Whether in different ways from you, or similar. I want to know how life is treating you, each one of you. What is your daily LIFE like? What are you doing out there? Can we HELP one another? As individuals, can we HELP one another without thoughts of nation, or cultural differences, or religious doctrines, or none of those at all? Can we just please COMMUNICATE in all honesty, and with honor, with absolute MUTUAL RESPECT what we may find troubling, or disturbing, or what we may find DELIGHTFUL in one another?
CAN we simply state what we feel, without cutting parts out to "spare feelings", or to "avoid confrontation", or to gain an edge against one another?
Could we simply lay all that aside and just get down to KNOWING one another?

KNOWLEDGE IS THE ONLY POWER WE NEED...THE KNOWLEDGE OF ONE ANOTHER'S THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS, THE ABSOLUTE KNOWLEDGE THAT WE ARE LIVING HONORABLY, WHETHER OUR GOVERNMENTS OR ANYONE ELSE ON EARTH ARE OR NOT. FIRST, LET US KNOW OURSELVES, AND HAVING MASTERED THAT, KNOW ONE ANOTHER.

Yes, sometimes, others' choices seem "wrong or right", but because we cannot climb into each others minds, we cannot possibly know what motivates, what drives each choice that another homo sapiens sapiens makes... unless we and they SAY WHY, unless we speak up, unless we simply express our reasons, truthfully, with honesty and honor and without FEAR to one another, we are doomed to misunderstandings, doomed to harbor mistrust and fear of one another. NOTHING can justify our unwillingness to simply present ourselves to one another as honorable, truthful people. What may seem "wrong" for you CAN be perfectly "right" to me, which is why communication without fear or judgement of one another is essential.
Our "rights and wrongs" may never be the SAME.... SO WHAT? SO WHAT? We must choose to VALUE ONE ANOTHER, OR NOT!

HOW dare we JUDGE another if we lack understanding? HOW can we communicate and understand anything without truth and honor to guide us? That is akin to treating a patient without knowing ANY SYMPTOMS! It is like describing the color blue to a person blind from birth!
All we can utilize is the FACT that there is a patient who is ill, and a person without sight. It is left up to us to deliver a cure for the sick, and to create a way of 'visualization' for the sightless. These things are NOT impossible.
Actually, NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE! We've also been lied to about that! NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE!

DEAR WORLD, PLEASE BELIEVE ME, NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE TO THOSE WHO REJECT IMPOSSIBILITIES!

We, each of us, have incredible abilities to communicate, to dive in deeply within ourselves and come up with the key to understanding both ourselves and others. It is well worth the effort!

BE WELL, DEAR WORLD! LIVE HONORABLY WITH ALL LIFE!