Imagine there’s no Heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today …

Field Negro’s contemplations about religion, Lupe Fiasco, my grandfather’s memorial service, and other personal issues really had me thinking about the positions I’m taking in worldly issues. It made me think about the existence of Heaven and what it means for so many of us trying to find meaning in our lives. It’s about 12:53pm and normally if I was a practicing Catholic, I’d be in church right now. Instead, I think about why it is I’ve left the pipe dreams the church sold me almost 10 years ago. We’ve become so complacent with everything around us …

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
We’ve sat down and watched as the world around us and everyone else’s individual interests overshadow the collective well-being of the proletariat. It’s almost as if we live our lives wantonly, waiting until the very last moment to reconcile with ourselves and our relationship with the G_d within us. There are wars going on, famine, sexism, racism, unneeded death, and all sorts of pestilence ravaging our world, but many of us accept it because, as much as we preach change, we’re really not.

You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Even personally, we have issues with our parents, friends, lovers, co-workers, strangers we randomly meet, children, students, employers, … that list is interminable, and yet we constantly try to find a way to find a balance. Some of us go about it one way and end up miserable, while some of us have been successful in that endeavor. I’m personally still trying to keep things in perspective. Maybe it’s my Aquarian nature to think so idealistically about the state of the world, but there has to be a time for us to finally come together.

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world …

And I’m not saying some of these issues don’t happen for a reason. Problems throughout the world are in constant reaction to the last action, similar to a pebble in a pond, and the more pebbles you put into the pond, the more the waves crash with each other. Think about the constant intersections of rupture, and somewhere in between them, a plateau of stillness.

You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one

Imagine if we weren’t simply searching for utter happiness, but peace. Simply being angry isn’t going to do anything other than alleviate my emotional wounds. Acting and being part of the solution has become so vital to my quest for true peace. Everything is relative, and when we put our lives’ pieces in proper perspective, it becomes a lot easier to imagine that reality …

jose, who wonders if someone noticed the theme since last sunday …

p.s. – Shout-outs to:

AM, who wrote a really good entry about me,

All the Carnivals I forgot to highlight as of late like JD’s Carnival of Math 18,

Evolution’s Carnival of Education 139,

Global Citizenship in a Virtual World’s Carnival of Education 138, and

EducationWonks’ Carnival of Education 137.

I’ll do a better job after this, honest.