Enter the new year with acceptance of pain, imagination and joy!

The cold that blanketed the West Coast of the United States with tens of deaths, was no different in its devastating effects from the heat that enveloped the East Coast a few weeks earlier.

And so it is everywhere in the world.
Month-long droughts and torrential rains, snow in abnormal quantities, and the melting of glaciers.
Contrast seems to be the theme of the turn of the century, a sort of contest between extremes.

The relational and existential immobility due to pandemics in the richest countries and massive and unnatural migrations due to wars and famines from the poorest countries.
The record accumulation of money of a few ultra-billionaires and the growing poverty of increasingly large sections of the population which has now also reached those who have a stable job.
The ease of access to information by the general public through new technologies and imprisonment or death for those who spread inconvenient news to governments.
The evidence of the lethal consequences of wars and an arms race that does not stop and has reached levels of public spending never seen before.
The dizzying increase in the prices of fossil energy and the suffocation of renewable energies.

Everything is in obvious contrast.
Too obvious.
Too contrasting.

Because in reality, it seems that a large part of the population, affected by one or more of the elements described above, does not react in the appropriate way, in the way of simple survival, but rather, the reaction should be that of instinct that allows you to understand the strength of your enemy, the value of your qualities, the surrounding elements, and to prepare effective responses.
Like the instinct that arrives at Resistance, Rebellion, and Revolution.
While resignation does not.
Resignation, a feeling that is lethal in our individual lives as well as in historical moments like the one we are going through: the greatest crisis in the history of humanity. A resignation that certainly derives from a sort of mere habit: we are witnesses of the worst injustices, we are victims of the most pitiless traumas, and in some cases, we are forced to be accomplices in the cruelest of crimes.
Every day, for every single social act of our existence. And we become used to it or even addicted.

So we keep what still belongs to us, our Conscience, safe, hidden, in chains; and assuming to protect it, we starve it, until we can no longer hear its faint voice.
Then we end up lamenting the absence of that voice on a collective level and we involve others in annihilation, in loss of all will and ability to react, which in order to be more effective must not only be ours, but shared, widespread, up to become a distinctive trait, and even be proud to show others our apparently reasoned awareness that things will never change and that opposing them is downright useless and stupid.
We perfect the techniques to put our Conscience to sleep: pity, guilt, helplessness, denial and best of all, the sense of invincibility.
All things which can be translated into daily language…
"I am heartbroken and desperate."
"It's my fault".
"I can’t do anything about it".
"It’s not true".
"It won't happen to me."
All weapons that we use to hurt our only ally, Conscience, closed in the cage of preordained and conventional collective rhythms, birth, growth, procreation, and death, a list from which we have taken away the enjoyment to replace it with production.

The neoliberal and capitalist logic that have created this annihilation of thought took further strength from it and spread it in every corner of the world.: proof of this is the growth of right-wing and conservative parties, functional to a system that promotes profits at any cost.
But to fully understand the fallacy of this individual and collective attitude, we can try to think what would have happened if it had been adopted by Palestine, Tigray, Yemen, the Caribbean, and South American countries, or Africa.
Let's try to think what would have happened if Julian Assange had misbehaved like that.
Let's try to think about what would have happened to environmental movements.
Let's try to think, let's try to imagine.

Here, let's imagine.
It is there that we free consciousness again: when we imagine it free.
That's where we reinvigorate it, when we imagine it together with other Conscience.

The first consequence we will have to deal with is Pain.
For not acting sooner, for the lives we lost, for the lives we could lose, for missed opportunities…
Pain is the sign of our ability to overcome those challenges because it is the symptom that we are facing them.
Let's accept that Pain, let's understand its importance, let's share its teaching.

Another element we gain when we free our Conscience is to rejoice.
We rejoice in the opportunity we benefit to change things.
Indeed, we feel pain because we feel joy. Joy for life. Exaltation for the beauty of Life.
Pain is the messenger, but Joy is the message.

That's why our resolution for 2023 is to accept Pain, to Imagine and to Rejoice.
Pain, Imagination and Joy.
Everyone chooses in which order.
Let’s accept the pain of the world and of every living being.
Let’s imagine a different world, let’s create it in our minds and hearts.
Let’s rejoice in changing everything we can.
We will thus discover that we can change much more than the current system forces us to think.
Accept the pain, imagine and rejoice.
Then we will find out that we can win.
And yes, we will win.
We will win.

The Human Exploring Society has released this article under the Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivatives 4.0 International Creative Commons license. Feel free to share it under the license terms.

Cover illustration by Yorgos Konstantinou, Greek illustrator who lives and works in Germany as a creative director at Imagistan.