Today Pat and I took our granddaughter to the Big Gig, Summerfest, the largest music festival in the world, on the Milwaukee lakefront. There are 11 stages of live music from 12 noon to 12 am. Admission was free from 12–3 today and there was plenty of food, drink and merchandise available. Lots of loud music, lot of people, lots of stimuli is not my thing but I just tried to deal with it in the moment, shutting down some of my feelings but not enough to make me unaware.

Walking thru life being aware yet not being overwhelmed by the onslaught of information being thrown at us, is something I struggle with. At times I have been too insensitive and numb to the world around me and at times I have been overwhelmed with feelings and emotions, like anger, that get out of control.

I like to think I have got wiser with age on how to balance awareness with unfeeling but many people have put me in a box of talking too much, drowning out sensitivity and/ or being angry at all the time. It is hard to get out of the box or stigma no matter what I do.

The modern information age does throw a lot at us and to take a contemplative view, without being a monk like Thomas Merton, is hard to do. Also I believe that ‘powers that be’, some unspeakable, throw so much disorder at us that it is hard for us to be aware and stay balanced. Individualism, ‘you do your thing and I do my thing’, does not help for once we became aware and want to do something we find it hard to work together.

I try to stay focused but often wander. My main political focus these days is to expose in any nonviolent way possible the fact that the local St. Vincent De Paul Society, under the control of a few, is spending about 4 million dollars of poor people’s money on a thrift store in the suburbs that will probably never aide the poor they are dedicated to serve on a one by one basis. Our charge, despite all the data and backup to it we have, seems so out of character of good people running the local Society that middle class and rich people just brush it off as a personal opinion.

The poor seem to bet it right away as they have seen the services of the Society drop just as the need is becoming greater. But the poor are hard to organize, being defeated too many times. Some of us aware of this information, injustice are like voices crying out in the wilderness. Will people hear us and act?

I do not know the answer to the last question but do know that once a person really becomes aware of an injustice the person must act or numb themselves. As I know there are plenty ways of numbing ourselves, from digital devices to sports to eating.

Being aware without being overwhelmed, being focused without following distractions is the question.

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