Ah, it’s Leap Day, that one extra day we all receive every four years. I know it’s really just an accounting adjustment and it’s a Saturday like every other Saturday. What’s to get excited about?
Well, this year seems like the perfect year to use it as a timeout, to step back from the precipice on which we find ourselves. A day to take a breath, clear our minds, and really consider how we want to go forward.
It seems that we’re in a time of craziness and just plain old fashioned bad mojo, a time that either rips us down or propels us forward in a new way.
As bad as it appears on many days lately, I see this as a opportune time for transformation. It often takes a crisis to stir people enough that they will act in ways to affect true change, to leap forward from their comfortable perches. We seem on the verge of crisis and catastrophe on a weekly, daily and even an hourly basis so maybe this is the time to take the great leap forward as a society.
Take today and think about it. Do you want to continue down the path in which we’re being led? That’s the easy way, of course. Takes no thinking. Just as a sheep doesn’t think, just follows the sheep ahead of it to either greener pastures or to slaughter.
Or are you ready to leap forward into the unknown? There are no guarantees, of course, except that it will be different from the status quo of a system in which the average person has found it harder and harder to stay afloat over the past forty years. Maybe if enough of us take that leap, we can transform it into a system that solely serves the interests of the people rather than those of corporations, lobbyists and oligarchs.
I don’t know about you but like that cat at the top, I am ready to get off this ledge and move to the next higher one.
Here’s a song from Billy Bragg, a modern day singer/songwriter/activist in the Woody Guthrie mode, advocating for social change, justice, workers’ rights and so on. I’ve been a fan of his work since his days with The Blokes back in the late 70’s. He seldom minces words and this song, Waiting For the Great Leap Forward, exhorts people to get up and become the change they desire.
That’s how change works, after all.
Give a listen. It’s one of those songs that builds and builds so hang with it for a while.
Redtree Times 