Living on the Edge
by Cheryl Bruedigam
Are you
living on the edge? Are you hip? Are you with it? Are
you moving forward?
The
conscious movement. There is a movement taking place in
the universal collective conscious (as Jung referred to
it), in our community conscious, and in our own
individual conscious, and it is happening right before
our eyes. History is changing, right here, right now.
Everywhere
we look now, we see "green" implementation, everything
digital, medical marijuana, yoga, gay marriage,
alternative fuels and electric autos, GPS, birth-control
chips, whole foods, hemp products in everything from
linens to clothing. Designer fashions and high couture
from recycled material. Religious fervor, the Mayan
calendar, the list goes on. And when was the last time
you used cash? It’s all happening now, heading into
2010. It is the most exciting time in history, of course
because this is the furthest mankind has yet been.
Looking
back over even just the last few decades, how our lives
have changed. The things we do each day and how we do
them, the products we consume, our "must-haves" and
"can’t-live-withouts," even the words in our language.
In the seventies, it was an eight-track; the eighties a
Daytimer and a boom box; the nineties a portable CD
player, and now, just a decade later, it’s an IPod and
cell.
We are
finally evolving beyond a period of a certain type of
living that we have been in since the end of the second
world war. Yes there were changes all along, and though
there was a change of consciousness in the sixties,
similar to what we are experiencing today, it did not
change the foundation of our society. Life
continued on much the same. School, home, church, meals,
travel, activities, all remained the same.
Today, our
foundation is changing in order to accommodate a
changing world; the disappearance of non-renewal
resources, seven billion people on the planet, the
explosion of technology that is happening so fast we can
hardly keep up. Just when you finally figure out
how to use the VCR it turns into a DVD player, then just
when you’ve mastered that, it’s now a PSC, and so on.
And these things are all contributing to our change in
consciousness. And inside of this change, we begin to
look at ourselves as we see the old ways fading away and
the new ones just forming, yet still we are unknowing as
to where we are truly going, as humans and as a
civilization. We can only imagine. And we wonder, who do
I want to be in this new world? What kind of person do I
want to be? Do I want to be on the edge, doing my best
to propel this change, contribute as I may through
whatever skills and talents I may have?
And
there's a kind of image thing going on with it, and
let’s face it, image draws most people. Today’s savvy
consumer is aware, health conscious, looking for value
and a higher quality. We like going to our yoga class,
sipping a mango smoothie, wearing Earth Shoes, educating
our children, driving Volvos, eating out and taking
adventure or alternative vacations. Who are we? We are
the baby-boomers come of age, into our own; our own
lives, our own ways, in our own nation. The "them" of
"Us and Them" fame, is gone, a generation passed away.
We have arrived. And where does this new arrival find
the majority of us? Prepared for change? Unknowing of
the change? Indifferent to change? There are some of
each; some intentional, some unintentional. We are still
the good, bad and the ugly. But we’re headed
there, some are on the ships crossing the ocean of
discovery, some still stand on the shores unsure, and
others wait fearfully hiding in the thick of the trees.
It should
be with pride that we embrace this change which we are
so fortunate to be experiencing in our lifetime. So many
firsts in history and we are a part of them, we the
human race, as a whole unit living on the edge on a
planet we call home.
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