My Chinese zodiac sign is the rat which is the first and cleverest sign of the Chinese zodiac twelve-year cycle.

I find the rat — an animal — describes me well. It is an accurate personality test and my character is, indeed, a classic zodiac type rat.

One of the rat’s chief traits is an exaggerated duty of care for the world within and without.

For most word-users born in the year of the rat, this usually extends to both the wordy (the word-users) and the wordless also known as nature.

However, as a researcher and author, this concern for the well-being of others appears to extend to all things within and without.

In essence, SchindlersWord and Limitless Opportunities, for better or for worse, is a weird paternal instinct to combating ignorance, gone berserk.

Another impulse

I also have another impulse which I hope is more common, and that is to treat everything with equal respect, regardless of wordless or word-user, and if the latter, regardless of age, race, gender, or sexuality.

That said, I make an exception for word-users bent on returning us to the dark ages of religion — as if the year 2023, and human rights, and those of us fighting for them, were just a pipe dream. I’m not ready to die for what I know.

The dark age of religion and of religious despots beheading their people remains a fact of life in far too many places on planet Earth today.

The best place on Earth

I reside in one of the best places on Earth to reside.

However, I find it difficult to accept that even in a place like this, parents who beat their children will have questions to answer to the police.

Yet religious parents who enforce the wearing of headscarves on their girls — parents who degrade the dignity and self-esteem of their children routinely — run free at the same time with no end in sight.

Why would parents who never graduated hold on to religious beliefs taught at schools?

Isn’t graduation a hallmark of adulthood?

Church and state

I defend the separation of church and state, and also everybody’s rights, of the wordless and the word-users alike.

Naturally, I see the world as a collection of individuals that are unique like every other individual.

I look at every word-user behavior as either a caring response or a cry for help.

All word-users are unique in their brokenness and have at their core the same belief that everybody and everything is a diamond in the rough.

The state of the world

I am ever so slightly uncertain as to where I am supposed to stand on the state of the world.

It seems to me that the word-users are the most insane species.

They worship an invisible god and destroy a visible nature, unaware that this nature they’re destroying is this god they’re worshiping.

In other words, the word-users are currently waging war against nature that if we win, we are lost.

Why stand?

I’m also not sure why I am supposed to stand anywhere.

I’m not saying that treating everything with dignity and respect is easy. All I’m saying is it doesn’t have to be this hard.

I care for and wish everything the best. I feel toward everyone that same duty of care that I feel toward all that exists within my sphere. I also wish for everything — wordless or word-user — every right to exist with dignity and free, devoid of violence and prejudice.

As a researcher and author, it is a privilege to express myself in writing, inclusive of the vitality that words offer, and to observe myself and others transcend themselves.

It moves me to witness and understand that each of us is uniquely strange in our uniqueness, yet under the sway of a greater intelligence than any word-users can imagine — the intelligence of fire, air, earth, and water.

That is the research and the words great gift and revelation.

Think about it, in the beginning is the word.

More about it at my upcoming seminar