The Time is Now

Sometimes it’s easier to see, the sense of things in general clicking in to place, the will of both the planet and the people to survive. So here we are, in all our tribes, the ragged bands of Rastafaried drummers in the hills, the people nestled down in bungalows and high rise flats in flat or rugged counties, brewing tea. Flocks of lawyers all black suited sweeping through the streets from one bar to another, football fans like families reared on lager, fleets of lorry drivers living in the backs of cabs, cabbies on their final run, early risers in their silent floats, clinking down garden paths, postmen in their masses who might be samurai on Fridays. Northerners on trains between the rambling cities and their acres of milled glass, cheerily bending their vowels, while Cornish in the sun sit wisely drinking pints of beer and telling stories of a dream which is not dead. Expatriates and immigrants, carrying their corners of far countries. Emos, Goths and metallers, hatching dreams of a new England in a thousand midland factories. And all the hordes at festivals, caught in raptures of the crowds, mouthing words their friends can’t hear but catch the meaning of. The silent mass of gardeners, pruning thorns and keeping out an ear for reassurance on the radio. Scores of kids full of their future and a rising flame of hope to meet it with, like all the gangs and knifes and brutal day to day on the estates could somehow be turned round with nothing more than pure intent. And all our lives and all our thousand million quirks of fate, our occupations, preoccupations, the things that keep us going; somehow all these things and everyone of us must raise our expectations up, lift ourselves up with the shining of the sun, somehow we must all realise that here today there is a thing worth fighting for. Not questionable interventions, not bombing our way to an apparent better world, but a fight to live and act like everything depended on it.

There is a promise still of summer sun and everything to strive for. Who knows how long each spell will last but we must drink it in, remember it even when the clouds are with us. Even in the teeth of gales and weeks of drubbing downpours we must carry something of the sun within our chests. Time heals pain but now the time is on us and we must make our mark or stumble on into oblivion. There’s never been a more pressing need for change and we must all be united with the sense of it. There is one common purpose, one persistent goal the world should work towards. Our earth is at a tipping point and we must all do all we can to bring her back.

For too long we’ve been seduced by comforts and any form of distraction you could put a name to. We’ve been swept up in a trance of never ending progress, of constantly expanding economics that have no end in sight. Money without end or else a world of similar longevity. We cannot have them both. And everyone of us must engage in what it takes to bring our ship around, to act to the very best of our abilities, to wake up those too sullen or too cynical to see the challenge of the day that’s our inheritance. Challenge and a charge of force like fire, the willpower that’s needed, the wind in everybody’s sails to do their best. We are now under trial and will all rise or fall depending on the quality of our commitment.

So breathe in days like this when everything is with us, let them charge your soul. For we need every scrap and motherload of spirit we can muster, allied to the concrete change in our behaviour and our expectations of those who govern us. And really we all govern our collective destiny and need to act as one. We are all in our clans of common interest, in our separate states and continents but will never succeed in this if we cannot see the common quality of our task, the inescapably shared nature of our fate.

We should not need to rise against our nominated rulers, nor they feel driven to put down the ones they think may challenge them. We should be restrained in any situation of potential conflict. We should all strive for that which can still be negotiated on. But we must come together now, we all must speak as with one voice; speak of unity and passion married to the greatest clarity and vision for the road that lies ahead. It’s not enough to hope that all is safely in the hand of experts. Everybody has a part to play and we must do so every bit as fully as we can. But more than that we need to act together, patch up our sprawling communities, look for allies and unlikely common ground, be outspoken when threatened by indifference or compromises where they go too far. But never loose sight of the chance we have for salvaging what should never have been put in any danger but has been so inescapably through millennia of our long learning curve as human beings; that goal we cannot take our sights from; a world where life can still sustain itself, a world were life remains a source of joy.