Flashpoint 2 - universal beauty

Was just thinking about some of the things, which shape our world – the good things.

It’s easy to look around us and see only the bad. Newspapers and their progeny, radio, TV and the internet have always operated on the general formula “bad news sells.”

But it doesn’t take much, either, to look around with different eyes and see the miasma peel away, leaving gleaming surfaces of beauty and truth. Understanding is here around us, if we can shake the grip of depression that seeks desperately to pull us down.

Know the truth that brings with it freedom. We are here for such a short time – like cherry blossoms or autumn leaves in New England, but while we are here, we can do such things as no one in the whole of history, has ever dreamed. We are as much creators as we are destroyers. We can be more than we are.

Our future may include the aforementioned “flashpoint,” but there is also a different kind of destiny in store for us, which could reveal itself. Because no matter the darkness, dawn is out there, hovering just over the horizon of all our lives. It opens itself to us like a flower – it whispers in our minds like the voices of angels.

“See here, the hope,” it says and maybe, it is right and true.

Clear your mind and remember what it was like: The first time you can remember another person smiling in anticipation as they watched you open a gift and the moment when you gave something back; remember walks when you were young and the world was new. Try to recall the texture of the moment when you met your first love; say nothing at all, but remember the sensations of a smile at sunset, or the perfection of the world on a perfect morning at sunrise – how you stretched and woke from a good dream and opened your eyes to witness perfection. Remember laughter you shared – totally uncontrollable, unstoppable laughter. Remember the first place you lived, when you finally got out into the world on your own – the freedom and the sense of all those sunrises and sunsets stretched out before you. Recall the moment you first held a baby; the sounds of distant children playing, their voices shrill and excited and happy.

“Flashpoint,” in this case, can have a very different meaning. Consider some of the greatest speeches – the ones that really brought so much to our world. The words of the Gettysburg address come to mind, as Abe Lincoln said “…and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from this earth.” The WWII speech of Eisenhower as he stood amongst the ranks of Airborne troops on RAF Greenham Common before the D-Day invasion still ring clear in my head, even though I only heard them as a recording – “The eyes of the world are upon you tonight.” The words of the great Martin Luther King, August 28, 1963 sparkle in my mind, like jewels. He said so many things then, but the most important probably was"’I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’”

Flashpoint can be viewed as a negative thing – as a moment of horror. But if you allow yourself a little time to see the good in the world, everything shifts.

Flashpoint can also be that perfect moment when you could feel the ebb and flow of history around you. It is a sensation as time slows and you can look around as if you were almost outside of yourself – and you know with timeless certainty that you are witnessing something great and pure and true.

And in that time, as in all the others we have shared because they are universal and human; and in spite of the fact that we have never even met, we will see something beautiful. And whether that is because our perspective is now different, or the places around us have become something great and unexpected, the truth will be inescapable.

There will be a flash – a moment so golden, warm and exultant, that suddenly and inexplicably, the world will be a better place.

And we will know it, look at each other, and smile.