Hey,

Thanks for the comments. I am learning how to navigate this site.

What is a social bandwidth? Good question. Here is my short answer. I’ll write more later.

As a member of a society, I agree to follow certain rules. For instance, if I am driving and I come to a stop sign, I stop. I have agreed to follow the rules of driving, as set forth by the state government.

Now, this is pretty much how I form my reality as well, as a member of that same society. Yet, the agreements I follow can be by conscious choice, or by subconscious agreement, or by generational, tribal and/or genetic ‘agreement’. I can see this will be difficult to describe in a short comment…

…but for now let me give an example or two.

When I was living in the suburbs as a young girl, the adults raised money to build a baseball field in the empty lot right behind my house. There was great excitement about creating a space where the children could have a place to focus their energy and play a sport, rather than starting fires, which was what happened with great frequency in the empty lot (and probably a few other activities as well). So we all watched as the tall wild grasses were plowed and the diamond was dug out, the building of a neighborhood play venue.

I saved up my money and bought myself a glove. I oiled it, and practiced clutching my hand over rolled up socks, and rocks and whatever I could find.
Then the day came. The baseball diamond was sparkly new, ready to be christened. My brother and a group of his friends gathered at our back yard and jumped the fence, commencing to put together an informal game of baseball.

I watched from the dining room window, and then went upstairs to get my new glove. I walked to the back of our yard, climbed over the fence and walked out onto the field.

My brother hollered from the dugout. “What are you doing?” “I’m going to play”, I responded. The boys looked at one another, a moment of pause, then laughter. “You can’t play, you’re a girl.” A big and fat boy, whose name I have long forgotten, picked me up and threw me back over the fence, my glove still on my hand.

I cried. I went back into the house. I told my mother what had happened. She listened. I thought she would go out and tell them to let me play. But she didn’t. She explained that girls don’t play baseball. I kept crying and repeating, “it’s not fair.” My mother’s response was, “Life isn’t fair.”

So this was reality when I was 8. Years later, when my sister was 7, girls were able to join little league, a baseball league for elementary school aged children. She and my younger brother both played in the league. My sister did not know the reality that I had known. The social reality had changed.

There are many ways that our experience of reality enter us, and often they come in ways that we may not detect with our conscious mind. I will write more about some of these ways, that I have observed. This simple example is one I think we can all see as a parallel for experiences in our lives. As time unfurls, human rights ebb and flow. In hindsight we can intellectually say, this was given, this was taken away. Yet, when we are living it in the moment, it is our social reality. Many of us will accept such mores as reality, will say, “this is the way it is.” Some of us, like that little girl who simply could not understand why girls did not play baseball… will question it, and occasionally confront and change it.

I must end for now…but leave you with something to ponder. When there is an inner tension inside you. You believe that reality is one way, yet in your body there is a tension. You can not align with this reality. Has this ever happened to you? Have you ever questioned its validity? Have you ever dreamed of changing?