Everybody

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The depth of hate has no bottom.

The truth has a limit for people to believe.

Everybody has fears.

Everybody has hopes.

Everybody has beliefs.

Our fears, hopes, and beliefs we seldom share.

We are mindful that sharing what we say to ourselves out loud is considered being soft.

Weak.

Unworthy.

Why?

Because we believe strength makes right?

Some of us do.

Some of us see the person who does what they want, when they want, how they want as being a leader.

Damn the consequences.

Damn, the lives destroyed.

Damn, what's right.

They got it done.

Everybody wants a hero.

We want to be rescued.

We need someone to come and make it better.

But no existential hero is coming to save us.

The only superhero waiting to make a difference is we, the people.

Our fears can become so great that we're willing to listen and obey any voice.

Those that profit from our fear knows this.

That's why they whisper in our ears the things we want.

Everybody has a problem with the truth.

No one likes to find out they are wrong.

Nobody.

But being wrong is just as natural as being right.

The only thing about being wrong is if and when you find out you're wrong, you do nothing to change it.

That's when you've consciously decided to turn away from life and become a servant of hate.

Everybody feels pain.

Everybody can heal.

Everybody can make their corner of the world better.

We just need to believe that only love can conquer hate.

Peace

Toby aka Daniel J Frey

What Do You See

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The woman who doesn’t go when the light turns green.

The man yelling at the sun.

The boy with the angry face.

The girl standing on the corner.

Who do you see?

The woman waiting to vote.

The man with the red hat.

The boy stealing a hoody.

The girl vaping.

Who do you see?

The woman with tears at the clinic.

The man wiping his eyes in the coffee shop.

The boy pushing past you.

The girl who cut herself.

Who do you see?

The woman who is drunk.

The man passed out, his nude ass exposed.

The boy asking why everything costs so much.

The girl spitting in your face.

Who do you see?

We see what we want to see.

All of us.

What we see and how far we can see is up to us and no one else.

Do we see only ourselves?

Or do we see the countless people of humanity all with a story, all with a life, all with a purpose, a meaning.

A better world begins when we open our eyes and see.

Peace

Toby aka Daniel J. Frey

Rocks

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Am I talking to a rock?

It used to be said that an individual had rocks for brains.

I propose a whole society can have rocks for brains.

Rocks are immutable.

Immutable means they don't change.

The only thing that can change a rock is time.

The rock is still a rock till the very end.

You can only wear it away, grain by grain, till you can't call it a rock anymore.

Humanity, since the beginning, has built entire societies upon a belief.

The Egyptians believed that if they hid an image of the Pharaoh buried out in the desert and it was not destroyed, they would live forever in paradise with the Gods.

The Romans believed that a wife of a citizen of Rome, a man, was his property. Upon the man's death, his wife was to be put to death if she were still alive.

The Renaissance of enlighten people still believed in witches and didn't know that a woman contributed to the formation of a child.

They believed, as so many still do today some 600 years later, that a woman is an Easy-Bake-Oven.

The man places his dough inside the woman, forming into a being that is the man's property.

It wasn't until the American Civil War that we started to wash our hands before we conducted surgery.

It was legal to kill native people of California well into the 1980s if you wanted their land.

This is all just the tip of the bullshit pile that people have invested their entire lives into.

Am I talking to a rock?

Rocks don't examine if they are wrong.

Rocks don't ask if what they are doing is right.

Rocks don't change because you ask them.

Rocks don't care about your suffering.

Rocks don't vote.

Rocks don't care.

Rocks don't listen.

Rocks aren't alive.

They are solid as a stone.

Once you understand the fundamentals of rocks, you must tell yourself to stop trying.

Stop trying to make rocks something they aren't.

You'll only crash and roar like waves upon the rocks, but the rocks will still be there.

I'm talking to my liberal brothers and sisters.

There's been only one way in this world that has been found to change a rock.

You have to live a good life.

By you living a good, happy, joyful life, you'll demonstrate to the rocks of this world that there is happiness.

There is life.

There is caring.

There is love.

One of those rocks will see and just maybe ask itself, "How come they are happy, and I'm not?"

Let the rocks be and move on.

It's time we get on getting on and move forward to that better tomorrow we who aren't rocks have been waiting for.

Peace

Toby aka Daniel J Frey

Feeling Much

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The world is hard.

Soft people get smacked up hard in this world.

I know because of being an empath.

For most of my life, I thought being an empath was a thing of science fiction.

It turns out I didn't read enough.

I've had this problem with this world as far back as I can remember.

It's not as far back as most.

The first twenty years of my life are gone because I died at age seventeen.

I lost my memory.

I lost my family.

I had to relearn my past.

Most, if not all, of it I didn't like.

When you're born soft, the world will gleefully stick you hard.

Cruel father, a mother on the cross, bullies.

Every question struck down, telling you you're retarded.

Stupid.

Being cruel is not only the point but is a strategy for survival.

In a world of limited resources and an ever-changing environment being cruel, selfish, and hateful allows you to survive.

The man living alone needs nothing and nobody.

The American ideal?

I was born soft.

I feel things others don't.

Like a dog tied up in the yard, I can hear danger approaching.

I can smell fear.

I can see self-made ignorance.

I know instantly when you're lying.

Soft people are here for a reason.

We have a duty.

A duty to warn.

A duty to care.

Being hard going through life not caring labels oneself as being a child.

Being soft and going through life caring for others makes you an adult.

In many ways, both our fault and nobody's fault, we have lost those touchstones in our society that allow us to recognize when it's time to transition into adulthood.

To care.

To put the future's well-being and safety ahead of our self-interest.

Soft people are here to remind the children to put away their toys and take on the responsibility of life.

Adults care for the children.

Children care only for themselves.

This world is hard.

Some days I can't really take it.

The cruelty, the despair, the uncaring, like one stone stacked on another, crush me.

Yet I rise.

I have a duty.

A duty to warn.

A duty to care.

Join me.

Peace

DFrey

Bridges

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When the road ahead meets a gap, we build a bridge to get to the other side.

That’s what we do, don’t we?

Humanity has never come up against a problem and said, nope, can’t won’t do that.

Yes, many will say let somebody else build the bridge.

That’s true enough.

But when there’s a river to cross, everyone recognizes the need to build a bridge to get to the other side.

Ain’t no mountain high enough.

Ain’t no river wide enough.

Ain’t no valley deep enough.

As the song goes to keep us from getting to where we want to go.

Racism is a gap.

It’s a mountain, a river, a valley keeping humanity from getting to where it wants to go.

Where does humanity want to go?

It wants to get to a world where peace, justice, and love are the rule, not the exception.

Not something that takes every effort we have in our minds and bodies to keep and secure.

Peace, justice, and love needn’t be fought for.

A reason why we are in this constant numbing struggle generation after generation is the gap called racism.

There have been building efforts to get to the promised land.

Generation after generation has sunk foundations, pillars of stone, and steel deep into the river bank.

All in the effort to build that bridge.

To span that expanse.

But we keep coming up short.

The world is ruled by thirds.

It’s a hard, fast rule that every problem and situation can be divided into thirds.

One-third want a solution, one-third don’t care about a solution, and one-third fight any solution.

It has long been recognized by the bridge builders that there’s only one-third of the people actively help build bridges across humanities divides.

In fact, two-thirds of the people are either actively fighting the building of bridges or are doing absolutely nothing.

The worst part is those that are doing nothing.

Letting others do what they won’t do.

If we can get enough of the people who are sitting on their hands to join us, we can finish building that bridge.

How do we do it?

Here’s an honest answer…

I don’t know.

People haven’t listened to the words that Jesus said.

They don’t listen to Dr. King or Gandhi.

They don’t respond to the voices of poverty, the tears of despair and loss.

They don’t respond to the bombs of war, the bullets in our streets, our schools, our homes.

That dark river out there called racism sure has a lot of people afraid.

I’ve been thinking, and you all can tell me I’m nuts.

I’ve been thinking that we have to get up out of our seats and take as many as we can by the hand, by the heart, and lead them step by step to that brotherhood of man.

We all must actively engage our brothers and sisters and take as many as possible to the other side.

We also have to understand that we can’t get everybody.

Waiting on the rocks to grow wings isn’t going to happen.

We can’t wait on the perfect time is too short.

Take your brother and sister by the hand and tell them we are not afraid.

You don’t have to be afraid, either.

Love is calling your name.

Hear it?

Just have to answer and cross that bridge.

It’s for free and only costs you your fear.

Peace

DFrey

Light In The Darkness

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The universe is dark.

So is the human consciousness.

We all are born into darkness.

No guidebook is handed out for free to guide us on our stumbling journey.

In the dark, we reach out and touch people with good and not-so-good intentions.

They, too, are on their journey, believing in their guides.

But what is the end?

What is at the end of those maps?

Is it the light of truth or an abyss where there be monsters?

Light in the darkness.

All life springs from the dark.

Without the darkness, we would not be able to recognize the light.

Life in all its form is a resistance to the darkness.

To never have lived means to never have grown.

To never have lived means never leaving the darkness.

To live means leaving the darkness behind where myth, legend, and lies whisper to our ego, telling us there is nothing outside.

Our ignorance of life is a virtue.

Nothing exists outside of what we believe to be true.

However, if you live only in darkness, in your own truth, you are only living a half-life.

A half-life means you are crippled and ignorant of truth.

You are not living a whole life.

A life where light and darkness reveal the truth of the true meaning of life.

Light in the darkness.

There are so few lamp posts of truth in the dark.

So many of the lights put up in the dark are there to trap and hold people like moths to a flame.

People put up these lights because of their need for power, for people to praise them.

They are not true lights.

To judge for yourself what is a true light, always remember this.

Truth doesn’t need you to believe because it is the truth.

Truth doesn’t need your money.

Truth doesn’t need your permission.

Truth stands like a light in the darkness piercing through the fog, sweeping back the ignorance, shining as a beacon of freedom.

The voice of love speaks with the light of truth.

Light in the darkness.

Peace

DFrey

Fear

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Where does it begin?

Fear of the dark.

Fear of the stranger.

Fear of the parent.

Fear of the barking dog.

Fear of the bright flashing light.

Fear of the bully.

Fear of being embarrassed.

Fear of being caught.

When does fear ripen?

Fear of peers.

Fear of sexual identity.

Fear of society.

Fear of judgment.

Fear of the future.

Fear of the unknown.

We are all at odds with fear our entire life.

We do many things to keep our attention from focusing on our fear.

Drugs, alcohol, sex, career, religion, politics, pets, eating, reading, music, walks, talking…

All human activity is a way of doing something anything that will keep us from thinking about our fear.

Ultimately, what can all these fears be boiled down to?

Death.

As far as we can understand, we are the only life form on the planet that knows it will no longer exist one day.

That’s real.

Everything we ever love will die.

That is why we run.

That is why we run from sunrise to sunrise.

We run to keep ahead of the fear.

We create a whole pantheon of stories we tell about the past, the present, and the future.

These stories we tell ourselves keep us from accepting the reality of death.

This is the evil at the heart of humanity.

This fear.

This fear of death keeps us from doing what is right.

This fear of death keeps us from doing what is just.

This fear of death keeps us from loving each other.

Understanding that death is the final act of living tells us about the importance of life.

Every life, every life is essential.

Every life, including yours and mine, has meaning.

You will not pass through this universe in its current form ever again.

Understanding how precious life is, the life of the individual, means; what it really means requires us to do more.

We can not let people die and let God sort them out.

That’s absurd logic.

This life is all we are guaranteed.

This is why we stand; we speak up, and we fight for what is right.

For justice.

For freedom.

For our human rights.

Fear is the slayer of truth.

Love gives birth to the truth.

I love you all; this is why I’m telling you the truth.

Drop hate be hope.

Peace.

DFrey

Blame

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Who is to blame?

Short answer…

We all are.

The act of blame serves three purposes.

One; is to target a thing, a person, with responsibility negatively.

Two, to generate guilt in a thing, a person.

Three, to deflect responsibility.

The blame game is as old as the human race.

Why are there no crops?

Who vandalized my sundial?

Why is the person I love dead?

Somebody did something; consequently, somebody must be to blame.

Who is to blame?

I can’t be to blame, am I?

When was the last time you heard anyone say they were at fault?

On average, Occam’s Razor says no one that you can personally remember.

It’s easier to blame anything else but yourself.

Bandits, crooks, hucksters, flimflam men, liars, despots, dictators, and the sociopath in your friends and family all use blame to stay in power.

Blame is used by governments, religions, social media, and charities the world over.

Someone is to blame!

Blame them!

You’re innocent.

Give me money, give me power, give me your soul.

Trust me.

Just an aside, if anyone ever says to you, trust me, they are immediately untrustworthy.

Trust is earned, not taken.

And that’s at the core of blame.

Blame says that the other person is responsible.

You ultimately are taken off the hook; if someone else is to blame, you don’t have to do anything.

For that kind of relief, allegiances are formed between those who blame others and those who believe they are not responsible.

I’m here to say we are all responsible.

Hunger, poverty, injustice, and fear we are the weavers of darkness.

There is no outside force, no invisible mythical entity darkening the world.

Its people.

Us.

Our brothers and sisters who live in fear of the truth.

That fear we are all equal.

Everything we love will die someday.

This is why it is so important to love one another while we can the best way that we can.

That is why we must stand for justice the best way that we can.

That is why we must feed the hungry.

Help those that are sick.

Be with those that grieve.

This is why we must drop the blame and take responsibility for our life.

No one is to blame, but our failure to do what is right when it is needed.

Doing nothing is not a virtue.

Doing nothing is the tread that holds together the blindfold of fear.

I’m just one voice in a chorus.

I’m asking…

Drop hate be hope.

Peace

DFrey

Boundaries

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How far does your influence extend?

What are the boundaries of your control?

Do you even think about it?

Do you think about it a lot?

Do you road rage?

Do you hit your child?

Do you knock on doors handing out political, religious, and social issue fliers?

Do you yell at your neighbor’s dog?

Do you not leave a penny?

Do you march?

Do you write your congressman?

Do you stay in your own backyard and ignore what’s going on over the fence?

Boundaries.

We all have a potential sphere of influence.

Those people whom we know and don’t know are in their own bubbles also.

Some of us are ballsy enough to romp over to our neighbor's yard and burst their bubble.

However, most of us are complacent and allow our neighbors to drown.

We assume their decline; their failure is all there’s.

We had nothing to do with it.

Boundaries.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.

There are groups of us who believe we can lead other people to the well of our belief and make them drink the water we’re pouring out of our mouths into there’s.

This is and has been a false narrative given to us by those individuals and societies that have subjugated us, the people.

In other words, you can’t force people to believe like you no matter your moral high or low ground now which you stand.

If you do, you are a little dictator.

A nationalist.

A fascist.

A supremacist.

Believing that everyone is within your boundaries of control.

Your subjects to do with as you please because you are the king of the world.

Boundaries.

There are boundaries we break, but there are also boundaries we don’t break.

We allow poverty to murder our neighbor and their spirit.

We allow injustice to steal truth.

We allow racism to beat us down.

We allow those people who do not have boundaries to make us cowards.

It is difficult to have boundaries when passions are inflamed.

However, there is a difference between seeing a person drowning and either ignoring them or throwing them a book on how to swim.

There is a boundary in between.

It’s called love.

Love understands; Iove attempts to tell us that you can’t always get what you want.

Do no harm, love asks of all of us.

Your boundary ends inside of your head; your influence ends there, also.

We come together as a community, share ideas and plot a course together that best fits all of us.

Taking all reasonable ideas and beliefs into account.

In the history of the world, there has never been a single belief, a single person that has had all the correct answers to life’s problems.

History, in fact, is littered with people and beliefs with poor boundary control.

Truth, justice, freedom, and love have always defeated them.

Always.

Peace

DFrey

Heavy Lift

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Some of our brothers and sisters believe that the law is up for debate if it is not explicitly written in the U.S. Constitution.

It's even up to debate whether it applies to you and will you obey it.

This is why there is a job ahead of us all.

There is a heavy lift.

The Constitution has to be amended.

What does amended mean?

It means that our society had grown more complex than when the Constitution was originally written.

In 1787 the Constitution was written by and for white Protestant male land owners.

Period.

However, in their wisdom, the founders put in a contractual clause.

This clause said that as the American Society grows, it will be recognized that this document will be inadequate for the needs of future citizens.

The Constitution can have its prose re-written, added to, and struck if a majority of States see the need.

Many of our conservative citizens believe that the Constitution is the same as their Christian Bible.

It is not.

Understand it is a civil document stating the rights and protections of its citizens and how they are to be governed by their elected officials.

It is not a religion.

It is not.

Consequently, the irony is that too many of our conservative brothers and sisters believe that if it ain't written in the Constitution, that right doesn't exist.

They are like the character George Costanza on Seinfeld.

When his boss fires him for having sex with his secretary, George laments, "If I had known, if it had been written down, I would never have done it."

This is the Conservative mindset; you have to have the law explicitly written down in one place and in one place only the Constitution.

Laws created by local governments, States, and at the Federal level are all up for debate.

Again the debate being will I obey that law.

Suppose there is no sentence in the Constitution saying there is a right to privacy between a woman and her doctor. 

In that case, that right doesn't exist in their belief.

No amount of legislation will convince them.

No amount of protest.

It must be explicitly written in the sacred document ordained by Jesus Christ.

Yes, Conservatives believe that the Constitution was dictated by Jesus Christ to Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Constitution…

Yes...

Jefferson "did not write" the Constitution; he wrote the Declaration of Independence.

People with a belief have no room for facts.

Also, Jefferson was not a Christian; he was a Diest.

A Diest is a person who believes in logic over mythology.

Our heavy lift, if we can get the resolve together to do so, is to convince a people who believe in a mythology over reason.

It is not going to be easy.

Nothing good ever is.

Some people have to be dragged into the light for their own good.

I can tell you from personal experience that this is true.

Just like a Lifeguard… 

We who understand and believe in the greater good, for justice for all, are being called to come to the rescue of our brothers and sisters.

Our brothers and sisters are drowning under the weight of myth.

A myth that keeps them spiritually oppressed.

A myth that doesn't recognize their economic and social sacrifice.

A myth that forces them into servitude that cares nothing for their welfare.

A myth that keeps the power in the hands of the few, not the many.

This is the good fight.

This is the good work.

This is why you and I are here and now in this place.

Peace.

DFrey aka Toby

Why Change Can't Happen

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Believe me.

That's the central problem in America.

You can believe me or not, but understand that there is a fundamental roadblock at the heart of gun control, abortion, voting rights, civil rights, and human rights.

That roadblock is what you believe.

There has always been an error in interpretation as to what belief means.

Belief has always been a zero-sum game.

You either believe, or you don't.

If you don't believe, you are somehow out of touch, sinful, against God, against me as a person who does believe.

There is no fighting belief.

Once a person has committed themselves to a story, it is impossible for them to entirely let it go.

And what does belief do for us?

It feeds our prejudice.

It feeds a monster called ego which demands that I'm the center of the universe.

Belief tells us it is right for us to be selfish.

Protect our own.

It feeds that inherent genetic childhood psychology, that feeling that I am the center of the world and that I must survive.

My needs before the other.

I am the chosen.

Consequently, in this mix in our nation, there is a group of people who firmly righteously believe they are God's chosen people.

And then some know that this belief exists, and they feed that prejudice for their own profit and power.

They keep the monster called white supremacy alive, feeding it the red meat of death and destruction.

They are the gatekeepers keeping the order in place.

These gatekeepers can be found in houses of legislation.

Sitting in judgment on legal benches.

In pulpits.

In our places of work.

In the home.

The belief that I'm better than everyone else on the planet is not limited by class, race, or income.

Belief is a cancer on the soul of mankind.

Belief served a purpose when humans were alone on a hostile planet of limited resources.

Belief is a sickness that rots society from the inside when you live in a world of abundance.

Belief keeps the individual isolated.

Isolated from reality.

Isolated from asking who is my brother who is my sister?

What does your belief tell you right now?

Can you see people marching for their freedom?

Or do you see thieves reaching for something that doesn't belong to them?

Do you hear people crying?

Or do you see beasts who got what they deserve?

Do you defend the past?

Or do you embrace the future?

Do you hate?

Do you love?

Change can't happen unless we change what we beleive.

What do you believe?

Peace

DFrey

Madness

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There are no words that will stop the madness.

Only through our actions will we gain our rightful protection from fear.

What is at the heart of gun rights madness?

What is the pillar, the rock on which some believe we have an inherent right to kill?

This country, in particular, suffers from this madness the most.

The source the origin of this madness is nothing new.

No.

It was brought here with the arrival of Europeans to the shores of the Virginias.

It was in the hearts and minds of the Pilgrims.

It is the belief that God, the one and only, created the white race to dominate the world.

If any other race got in the way of God’s will, then it was the duty of white people to put the other races in their place.

It was their duty to kill in God’s name.

White people are the chosen people by God.

The source of the origin of the gun rights madness is the belief in white supremacy.

I’m too old now to pull my punches.

It’s too late to put a diplomatic spin on madness.

It’s time we took the lies by the neck and kicked it out into the spotlight.

This ugliness, this vile evil fostered by timid sociopaths to keep themselves in power, has gone on too long.

Guns are tools.

Not everyone is qualified to work a jackhammer, are they?

They may think they can.

They may believe they can.

But they would be mad to think they could.

Tools do not have an inherent right.

WE THE PEOPLE and our rights to peace, happiness, and security, our rights supersede the madness that tools are more important than lives.

WE, THE PEOPLE, have to confront our brothers and sisters who believe in the madness of white supremacy.

You can’t tell a rock to fly no matter what you think is best for that rock.

You can’t just tell a white racist to grow some compassion because it will never happen.

We have had over 2,000 years of the doctrine of love.

Do unto others as you would have done unto you.

How has that worked out?

100’s of millions of people have been killed around the world.

Murdered by white Christians.

If you don’t see the correlation between white people killing other races by the millions in history from the beginning of the Crusades to today, you got a bag over your head.

Until we confront the foundations of white supremacy that founded this nation and are supported by the Christian Church, we will never end the madness of gun violence.

Every Sunday, partitioners in this nation are told there is only one way to God.

They are told there is only one religion that God likes.

They are told there is only one kind of person God likes.

The white, protestant, Christian male.

All others are second-class passengers and are subject to being killed for disobeying white males.

This is the madness that is taught to our children before they can even speak.

This is what they learn in Sunday school.

They believe this is true because why would an adult lie to them?

Somewhere, somebody, and it might as well be us has to stand up and say no more forever.

Forever!

Drop hate be hope, people…

Peace

DFrey

Brotherhood

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Equality.

The word the idea of equality strikes fear in many hearts.

Not just racial equality.

No.

But intellectual, cultural, physical, and gender equality also strikes fear.

How could someone be afraid of being equal?

Being equal means I am not unique.

I am not special.

I am not chosen.

I don't get a break.

I'm not first in line.

I am not the best.

Notice how there is a lot of "I" in these thoughts?

"I" as opposed to "us."

Human beings are unique as far as we can tell that they can hold two opposing thoughts in their minds at the same time and believe both of them are true.

I am special; therefore, mankind should serve me.

The rest of humanity was placed on this earth to maintain my position as leader.

No thought given that if you were so unique, so superior, that as it has been said with great power comes great responsibility, your thought should be just the opposite.

If you are so superior, you should be serving mankind, ensuring its happiness, freedom, and justice.

Equality.

Our journey to brotherhood has only begun.

It got some good press, like an announcement in the news back in the 1950s.

Like a voice in the wilderness that echoes between the trees, I am a man pricked up the ears of those asleep.

Far too many fell asleep after those voices of freedom were taken away from the world's consciousness.

Too many thought the fight was over.

It was only the first round of a fight that has no end.

Fear is a terrible thing.

It will make people do terrible things.

Fear will make people deny the truth.

That's why it's such a potent weapon for those who profit from fear.

Realize those who profit from fear it's their only source of income.

They know not of any other trade than fear.

Let us who know better trade fear in on hope.

Let us trade our fear for compassion.

Let us trade our fear for what love demands of us all.

More.

Love wants us to understand there are no boundaries to its reach.

Love is the future.

Fear no more, my sister, my brother.

We are right by your side together, facing the future together.

Drop hate be hope.

Peace

DFrey