We have “progressed” to a state of living in which we can hide from the world. Our caves are with adorned buttons and knobs for spacecrafts. There is little to bring us to the open air, the free interactions of society. Our interactions have moved electronically, bouncing off satellites and through wires and cables, like veins, or wirelessly as sonar or telepathy.  No wonder some of our most sensitive are forced to the streets, where they can tune in and hear these signals in the air–the television shows, the radio waves, the digital conversations. We have “progressed” so that there is more room for the voyeur to wander, for the spiteful to build traps and procure weapons so that they may fulfill their fantasies of villainy. More room, indeed, to pace the crowded dying rooms (for what living do we do in living rooms?) and obsess over the fraction of life society allows us to have, or to obsess over unrequited love or the past. A lost opportunity is another life, a life one wasn’t meant to live.

So our “progress” has allowed for a closed state in which our demons are locked in with us. But why confront them when we can become them, and it’s so much fun to do so? I then ask can we be closed and free? How can one be closed in, shut away to one’s demons, one’s own devices, with idle hands, and be called free? Free to do what? To commune with the past or the future, or obsess as I described above? The only way to be free and closed is to be open while closed. A prisoner may have such a fixed perspective of existence that s/he may find the universe collapse in on itself in his/her prison cell.

We must have heroes: the Greek gods and the ancient gods of India, the superheroes of comic books and their villains–all humanized to be relatable. But does our “progress” provide a better environment for obsession, for villainy, than it does for heroism? Is it not easier to close oneself off from society and stew than it is to sacrifice oneself for a greater cause of true progress? For even the keys to a massive audience are locked by the cages of Mammon (the god of money) and his servants.

But I see new flowers grow, flowers that don’t need outfits or categories, flowers that believe in connections and oneness. Self-absorbed flowers, yes, but flowers of new colors, flowers that may know their true selves and the true selves of others. Flowers that I faintly hear rustle in the breeze. They grow open and free and they know they are deceived by the knotty trees who say they will show them light. These are new flowers that bend and twist like vines. These flowers are not slow and lazy, they twist with each other and grow stronger.

These flowers: heroes, them all.

Flowers cannot grow closed in the shade. Open and free is the way to be.