that Bermuda Triangle of NEEDS

"ALL FOR ONE and ONE FOR ALL."

It's the Three Musketeers motto.  It's also the way that social justice should work, independent of the philosophy by-and-for a fantasy vigilante band of Francophile fighters.

"Social justice" being that everyone gets what everyone deserves.  Each and every one.  But (this sad/funny line here from an Elliott Smith song) "no one deserves it."

YOU GET IT ALL!  The dishwasher, the entertainment system, the home dinette set!

That was the promise given to the winner of the golden age game show.  It kinda resonates with everyone at that time.  And should still.  Because hey, it's a wonder that any of this stuff works at all.  Appliances, vehicles, information technology.

Every day is a miracle.  And all of this stuff we have.  It works!  The system works.  We can be skeptics and cynics and fear-mongerers if we choose to play the game that way.  But I want to offer this strange consolation:  there is not a day in my life that my own tiny individual merits could actually pay for the rewards that this system of democratic/capitalist/semi-socialist ... global corporate... 

I often think and feel like I am the luckiest person in the world.  Do you feel that way too?

I sometimes behave as though I'm not.  I make mistakes.  I ashamedly blame it on forgetting that last impression.  That I really am so fortunate.  I am!  But ... I forget sometimes : (

It's kinda like the "rights" I have today are to feel this way.  To feel like I, among millions upon millions, am objectively, realistically, the luckiest person on the planet, in history.  In a pretty defensible way, most of us are.

And so, it's kinda like I have the "responsibility" to share this feeling, hopefully it's way closer to truth than I'm afraid of, but to share this knowledge and this feeling.

I hesitate to use "the *L* word" ... that four-letter magic that never ceases to deliver mutual affirmation and attainment.  Why do I hesitate?  I think it's because I don't know where the gravity is in Maslow's "pyramid of needs."  I feel like... I feel like it's more like Maslow's "jenga tower" of needs.  Any block removed in the wrong place could make the whole thing topple over.  

There are a lot of weird blocks.  Some people have unique ones like "no it doesn't make sense, but yes, believe it or not THiS is a NEED ... FOR ME."  And I feel like somewhere in there, that is a right.  I live in Portland, okay.  I feel like you have the right to be so special that you-of-all-people have needs that may require a lot of explaining, an extraordinary amount of empathy, && it's great.  It's amazing.  I feel like being that special... it kinda makes the world go round.

But then, there are basic needs.  Sharing basic needs with people that are for some strange reason lacking them... for any reason at all really... that's LOVE!  And an appreciation for human dignity.

Dignity... is.  The ability to be an entirely different person from when there are needs missing (oh no!  bad chapter of my life noooo please don't look at me 🥺)  to when those needs are (often quite miraculously, really) fulfilled (🥳 YES!  Now ***THiS*** is me!) 

or maybe it's just springtime and some kind of flowering-tree butterfly effect, is in effect.

And the point that brings this all together is, somehow we can do this for each other.  Maybe even anonymously.  (Cuz it takes a brave soul to tackle indignity with true empathy.  I don't know how it works, um, you have to like, lower yourself in awkward ways to become equal, and then!  ::quickly::::raise-yourselves-up-together to the restorative level of peace, enlightenment, and just being a bad@$$ magically perfect HUewMaN BeiN' ... and then you

((disappear in an ephemeral haze leaving behind trails of goodies and further attainment.))