Let's Pretend

When I was a little girl, my brother John and I would play make-believe. We would create scenarios and then play them out, pretending that it was so. Sometimes we were adventurers. Sometimes we were adults, doing the things that adults do as we understood them at the time, which is to say, looking important and saying incomprehensible things. Usually we would end up giggling and laughing at our own ignorance more than anything. My favourite make-believe was when we turned the upstairs hallway into a sea and old shoe boxes into boats. I loved to create a miniature world and look down upon it.

Let's pretend that we can create a new world to replace the old world that we have lived in for so long. Let's make-believe that we are visionaries and that our visions of what can be actually do make the world in that way. That's what the people of Egypt did. They made themselves believe that they actually could effect a real change in a world grown terribly stagnant and out of touch with the will of the people.

Let's pretend that as we feel ourselves to be, so the world becomes. So, for example, if I am loving and trustworthy and feel that within me, so the world becomes loving and trustworthy.

Let's do that.

I'll share a secret with you. It works. The world actually does become what you are. If you are honest in all your dealings, you'll live in a world where people are honest in all their dealings. I've been doing it for years.

I used to live in a 'bad' neighbourhood in Montreal. I never locked my door. I just don't like fumbling with keys while my hands are full of packages and a purse and my mittens. My friend, and neighbour, was appalled at my not locking my door. I made the mistake of informing her, with some pride, that I didn't lock my door. She appealed to me repeatedly to begin locking my door. So I agreed to do so, and being a person who honours her word, I actually did lock my door. With all that talk of thieving and being robbed and the danger of unauthorized entry into my home, a woman alone... (What was I thinking!) a certain focus on such an occurrence resulted. Two days after I began locking my door, I came home, unlocked the door, walked into my house and discovered a thief who had broken down the back door, also locked at the time, and was trying to find something worth stealing (I live very simply). He ran away and I called the police and had to live with a broken back door for 3 days as I couldn't get anyone to come fix it until the next Monday. After that, I stopped locking my door and have never since locked it and have never since had any unauthorized entry into my home. I don't lock my car doors either. I just make-believe that I live in a world where people have no reason to steal from each other.

So, let's pretend that peace in Libya is possible, probable, imminent.

Let's pretend that a new day is dawning on our beloved planet and that we can create a world where people have no fear of each other, where people honour each other, care for each other.

Let's pretend that the internet is an incredibly powerful and beneficial force for change in the human experience of what it means to be on this planet. Let's pretend that we are becoming one people, a unified community of souled-beings practicing unconditional love and total acceptance. I see this all around me. Everywhere I look, I see this, or signs of this, because it is my vision and I am making-believe.

Let's pretend that when we make-believe, we make the world anew.

I like to play that game. I like it very much.