The Uncensored Library

           I'd like you to know that we have The Uncensored Library at our collective global (sanitized, socially distant) fingertips. I think that's so frickin' cool. Mind you, to access it, I personally would have to get my little godson to let me onto his Minecraft account, since the library's only available on that game, and simply having the bare bones version gives you access, but the fact that I’m still fairly young and already choose to be technologically out of touch is not as alarming as censorship and not as exciting as this resource! You see here, whippersnapper, this be impor’ant!

Puttin’ yourself on lockdown during a pandemic makes life more stressful, for damn sure. That said, a survival mindset typically means that you believe you're always lacking, whatever that lack means to you. It stems from an increase in the stress hormone cortisol, maybe even more adrenaline, which of course means more selfishness, anxiety, fear and greed. The more one might hoard toilet paper or baby formula or price gauge hand sanitizer, the more they are defeating their purpose of empowerment. They're giving their power away to stress. A more productive, less stressful way of managing hardship and a sense of isolation is to focus on a sense of community and of family, as well as personal growth.

           Recently on an episode of her "Better Together" podcast, Maria Menounos chatted with the fantastic psychic medium John Edward and said, “What do people do in prison? They work out, they read, get their Master’s degrees, they do all these things!”, which I think is an appropriate analogy.

 

            Just today, in a coffee shop drive-thru, a barista advised me that this particular location “will be closed indefinitely”, probably due to a temporary shortage of staff, and he said he planned to devote some of this downtime to not only school but learning to make different coffee drinks, as he was a new employee, and to improving his knitting skills.

            Growth, people. We can utilize technology to isolate ourselves, increase loneliness and apathetic detachment, sure – it’s an option – but it feels better to use the internet to develop skills like knitting and cooking, or to learn about PTSD, psychoneuroimmunology, the work of Tesla, that great-looking novel you haven't read yet, maybe world history, in addition to checking out the online library envisioned by Reporters Without Borders, or RSF (Reporters Sans Frontiéres), which has wings dedicated to specific countries and keeps multiple copies of each work so that you could read a story in its original language or in English. 

Journalists around the world have struggled to share because of oppression and violence. I came across this project thanks to a post on BoredPanda that included the following quote: “In 2019 alone, 39 journalists and 10 citizen journalists got killed and currently there are 228 journalists and 120 citizen journalists imprisoned. These are alarming numbers. At the turn of the 21st century, nearly half of the world population still lacks access to free information. Deprived of essential knowledge and manipulated by disinformation, they are prevented from living in a political system in which factual truth serves as the basis for their life choices.”

Photo property of BoredPanda

            Weird as this is gonna sound to our routine-laden and cortisol-marinated brains, we have power by recognizing it within ourselves and sharing it. The way we simply feel good on the day-to-day and take care of kids and build up our careers and have less in the world to complain about is through a stronger sense of community. We progress as a human race through collective empowerment, arming ourselves with love and information.

Whether it’s quietly or not, please choose now to stand by what’s true. In an interview at Stanford School of Business, Oprah referenced a poem from Maya Angelou, “I come as one, but I stand as ten thousand.” With that in mind, I say, be brave like Pussyriot and Lady Gaga. Stand by what you’ve learned to be true and important, like Brené Brown, Oprah and Joan of Arc.

Pretend you know that we’re all connected at the electromagnetic blobs beneath our skin, blood, bone and sinew soul.