Dear Readers,
“If you are not a liberal when you are young, you have no heart; if you are not a conservative when you are old, you have no brain.”
This familiar adage suggests a linear progression from idealistic youth to pragmatic age, yet my own journey has traced a more complex arc—one that moves beyond the binary toward something deeper.
In my youth, I embodied the fervor of absolute conviction. My identity crystallized around radical ideology, and my self-worth forged in the fires of protest and resistance. I marched on Washington, orchestrated disruptive demonstrations, transformed libraries into stages for performance art, and penned lengthy manifestos steeped in what I believed were the only unassailable truths.
I was fearless in my certainty. At nineteen, I stormed into a strip club with warrior-like audacity, mounting their stage to confront what I saw as patriarchal oppression—until security ejected me back into the night. I percussion-protested with pots and pans, my body a human barricade across forest roads to halt the march of chainsaws.
My material existence reflected my philosophical stance: my entire wardrobe consisted of three outfits, because surely that was all any conscious human required. One pair of five-dollar cloth Mary Janes served as my sole footwear, though I preferred the direct communion of bare feet with earth. My bicycle was both transportation and testament, while cars, television, and capitalism formed what I considered an unholy trinity of societal decay.
Then came the rupture that would reshape everything. During a summer internship with an herbalist in Boulder, I encountered my spiritual teacher.
In her presence, my carefully constructed edifice of righteousness crumbled. My chest ached as if the scaffolding around my heart had been yanked loose. I felt both stripped bare and weightless—like a soldier suddenly realizing there was never a war.
The stark divisions of right and wrong, good and evil, left and right, suddenly revealed themselves as constructs of a mind trapped in polarity. I glimpsed something beyond the battlefield of opposing forces—a realm where wisdom emerges not from choosing sides, but from transcending the very notion of sides.
But awakenings rarely translate neatly into community. My own tribe would soon remind me of the cost of divergence.
Returning to campus, I attempted to share this revelation with my activist community, only to face their profound disappointment. They staged an intervention in the college parking lot, encircling me as evidence of my betrayal mounted—I had borrowed my boyfriend’s car instead of cycling to class. This vehicular transgression, they declared, proved I had abandoned the sacred values that bound our tribe together.
I found myself suspended between worlds, questioning how to live authentically.
In the years that followed, while maintaining my environmental convictions and rejecting excessive materialism, I became increasingly oriented toward spiritual awakening rather than external activism. Most of my energy flowed inward, leaving little for the outward battle.
Today, I wrestle anew with this balance. My perspectives have evolved through the alchemy of experience and maturation. I am less identified with polarities, understanding them now as cosmic forces inherent in creation’s dance—the eternal push and pull that drives evolution itself. Yet I witness our democracy convulsing in polarity’s grip, a nation exhausted by the relentless warfare of facts, information, and debate.
What we desperately need is wisdom, and wisdom emerges only from awareness.
This raises profound questions about consciousness and civic life:
What role does awareness play in a functioning democracy? How might each of us contribute to this greater awakening?
I invite you to contemplate these questions alongside me.
Awakening for the people, by the people.
This is my prayer.
This is my hope.
This is my invitation to you, my friends.
In Everything We Trust,
Sylvia
P.S.
If you haven’t experienced the latest season of South Park, I offer it as unexpected medicine. Whether or not you align with their perspectives, they hold up an unflinching mirror to our collective vanity, ridiculousness, and myopia.
Their irreverent laughter serves as balm for my soul in these fractured times, and I’m grateful to Paramount for ensuring such voices survive when so many others face silencing.
