Post Occupied

What have the Occupy protesters done to manifest change in the world?

Audrey and I barely make ends meet. We have both worked since we were children. For entertainment we go on walks. We go to the museum on free day. We read.

Before moving out here to California, we bought two shotgun houses in Indianapolis for around $20K each. We intended to fix them up and sell them for a profit. But that didn't work out. Today we're upside down in both.

We have watched over the past half-decade as our tiny assets turned into liabilities.

We rent the houses out. We can't get enough rent to pay the mortgage. Our families back in Indy help us maintain the yards.

The mortgage business, the real estate business, and in the political world are corrupt. But we took those risks. We bought those homes. We had that dream. If the risks had paid off, we would have been the ones to benefit.

My mother told me once, "If your only problems are money problems then you don't have any problems." She said that while fighting cancer. She died a few months later.

What she was trying to tell me is that money changes the external world, not the internal world. It changes who you seem to be, not who you are.

Even if she had possessed the wealth of a king, instead of Medicaid, her cancer would not have relented. Nothing could stop her from dying earlier than she hoped to die. All she could do was prepare herself for death's mystery and make peace with what she hadn't accomplished.

Now when I cannot pay a bill on time I think, "At least I don't have cancer." It's a shallow thought.

But as long as I have my health, lack of money can't stop me from doing anything. It can stop me from traveling the world in a private jet, but it can't stop me from traveling the world on a cargo ship, or in a canoe, or by walking and swimming.

It can stop me from getting a fifty dollar Neapolitan pizza with shaved truffles, but I can still forage for uneaten scraps of pizza from the dumpsters of the tens of thousands of pizza places in America that collectively throw away enough food every day to feed all the world's hungry.

If I am too proud to eat from a dumpster, that's an ego problem, not a money problem.

At it's heart, Occupy is about money. Where the protesters use the words justice and equality, they really mean vengeance and access to wealth.

If they want the world to be a more peaceful, just and equitable place, is camping in the streets the best way to accomplish that goal? Or would their days be better spent learning about themselves, sharing laughs with a neighbor, comforting the lonely, or learning another language?

What would make a bigger impact? Blocking the entrance to a bank, or developing the qualities of sincerity, humor and mental fortitude?

The protesters are upset because the crooked politicians aren't indicting the crooked business people with whom they have always openly conspired.

The Social Contract has never been fair.

The wealthy elite are where they are because of the advantages they were born with or that they wrestled away from others. Their sheltered, limited experiences keep them fundamentally disconnected from the day to day reality of most human beings. They withhold love and beauty from the world, and from themselves. They are kings of shit. They are beasts.

Politicians who sell out to the rich instead of advocating for their constituents are tools.

The way to stop it is to actually participate in our participatory democracy. Engage in the grueling, daily work of democratic self-rule. Attend city council meetings. Write to your legislators. At the very least vote, or else you deserve the corrupt, mismanaged system you have enabled.

Choices make people.

Occupy is righteous in its frustration. But the protesters could make a better contribution to humanity by volunteering at homeless shelters.

Power has always been corrupt. Wealth has always been greedy. Happiness has always come from within.

If you are disgusted by our Congress, as I am, vote them all out of office. If you are outraged at Corporate America's collective rape of the environment, support the grass roots efforts to expose their behavior and fight them in court. If you are devastated by the waste of life perpetrated by the war mongers, walk the walk and talk the talk of diplomacy.

All points of view meet at this axis: Change your own nature and you change human nature. Change yourself and you change the world.