new year--new age

It's the last day of 2014.  It has been a year full of changes, disappointments at a global level, festering distrust between groups, blaming, shaming, corruption, exposure, and of course, births of new people and deaths.
My own life has changed little this year--more time with grandkids, workplace alterations, ongoing aging---a positive as my grandmother assured me, as the alternative was not so good. 

But the global stuff; wars, religious animosity, gender issues, women's rights, political corruption, racial tensions--those things loom over my head, over everyone's head, like a dark shadow that moves over the land on a sunny day.
We frogs may all be nearly boiling now!
But, if I'm not an optimist, I'm also not a pessimist.  I keep going with the hope that I will live long enough to see the world turn this around.  That this is not the end of possibility, but rather that final turn of pain, retching, fever, before the sickness passes and the healing starts.
For 2015, I would like to see some signs of humanity opening up to those virtues that all religions spoke of--"love one another", "protect those that are weaker and in need", "don't kill", "don't steal", "respect others", "be true/keep your word", "respect yourself", "live modestly".

 I have heard it said, that all of those are actually--"don't steal"  don't take what is not yours to take, not another's life, not another's money, not another's self respect, not another's opportunities, not another's rights, not another's future  descendants. 

I have also heard that those are all covered by "do unto others as you would have them do unto you"

But there are other things that get in the wa:.  Beliefs that justify stealing happiness from others, things that have permiated our global society,  Things like  "its just business" used to explain everything from genocide to human trafficking to the subjugating of the least capable as low-priced labor,.  Beliefs that "women were made to serve man" and therefore they have no rights.  Beliefs that "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few"--great for Spock, but reality is, when the many is just a greedy corporation or a nasty dictator stealing the rights of a few people is wrong.  "Survival of the fittest" used to justify bullying, genocide, not protecting the weak, sick, young--and as they say--"don't mistake kindness for weakness" but don't bully's always do just that.

Am I wishing for a return to "ole time religion"?  OMG--not at all.  I'm wishing for the advent of something new and improved, something that has no factions, no branches, no divisiveness at all.  I don't want a "New World Order" or a "global religion" either.  My wish is for true freedom for all.   A world where every person has the same rights and all those rights are respected by everyone else---equally. 
A lot of things would become moot if this happened.  And such a thing is definitely not going to happen like the sing-along at the end of the "grinch that stole christmas" because such change does not start with a law or by a government.  Such change occurs in individuals.  It starts at the one and travels to the whole as it spreads.  It begins with self-awareness--not "i know who I am" self-awareness, but "the kind of questioning that never ends.  "I feel threatened, why?"  " I think I'm jealous of so-and-so, what do they have that I think I want or think I don't have".  The kind of self-awareness that a good 12-step program encourages.  The kind of self-awareness that a retreat into the wilderness, a vision quest, a few weeks in a monastery would help.  Socrates got it.   Now we need to.

Who are you?  Who are you really?  What do you want from life?  Is what you want measured by comparing it to what someone else has?  Is it material things?  Is it a lifestyle?  Is it a passion?  Is it loving, respectful of yourself and others.  Will getting what you want take anything away from anyone else? 

Are you kind?

Who are you?  Would you be all right in a world where everyone was equal?