Survival And What Matters
Written by Dionysos Maskelaris

"Better to light a single candle than curse the darkness." -Quaker saying
"We must be the change we wish to see..." -M.K. Gandhi

There are a lot of people busy with "matters of consequence" in this world, like owning things. They are also busy with matters of the heart and mind as described by Patrick McGoohan from “The Prisoner” TV show when he said, "I am not a number I am a man!" Those words are the cry for individual freedom and for remembering our humanity.

There are many forms of survival. There is surviving adverse medical conditions, accidents or perpetrated violence. There is surviving in nature with its harshness or mishaps, the surviving of lack of food and shelter, the society or place in society we are born to, and the surviving of emotional or physical abuse. There is surviving war, genocide or the slow demise of one’s culture. There is individual survival of the body and the mind and there is survival of the species, the human species, other species and ecological survival of all life. This is an ongoing theme across all species on Earth.

I struggle for artistic survival, spiritual survival and for the survival of love in myself and for my species. All human survival ultimately rests with survival of the human spirit, survival of the individual soul. Without the many forms of inwardly and outwardly directed love there is no survival. Our physical, emotional, artistic and spiritual survival, yes, all forms of survival are linked together by love for life. I am a survivor but my life is not just for survival. My artistic work is for the love and life near me, for the people I touch and the places I walk. My work is for the great evolving love and life in everything, from the atoms to the stars.

My words are not as important as what I experience or as important as my actions. My desire to “have” love is not as important as being loving. My life is just a tiny fleck of foam of infinite waves and particles in the ocean of the universe. Everything of me flows out, and everything in existence flows into me. Every atom has survived since it was formed. I came from the stars and I will return and become of the stars again. Through all the forms that I take, I will survive.