Saint Dirty Face

By Saint Dirty Face™ | Stay Dirty. Stay Human.™

Empathy lets us see. Compassion moves us to act. Love is what we choose to do next.

I watched Disclosure Day, and somewhere between the aliens, the secrets, and humanity losing its collective shit, something hit me.

What if this movie was never really about aliens?

What if it was about us?

Not the spaceships. Not little green men. Not whether somebody in Washington has been sitting on the biggest secret in human history.

What if the real disclosure is something humanity has spent thousands of years trying to bury?

Empathy.

Yeah. That little thing we’re all supposedly born capable of, yet somehow treat like an endangered species.

Grab a chair. This one’s going to get uncomfortable.

Bread, Circuses, and a Billion Likes

The Romans had a little trick called panem et circenses.

Bread and circuses.

Keep the people fed. Keep them entertained. Keep them distracted enough, and maybe they won’t question who’s running the show.

Two thousand years later, we’ve upgraded the circus.

Now we’ve got TikTok, Facebook, influencers, outrage merchants, and enough notifications to give a squirrel an anxiety disorder.

We don’t need gladiators anymore.

We’ve got comment sections.

We measure our worth in followers, our opinions in likes, and sometimes our understanding of the world by whatever some jackass managed to squeeze into a sixty-second video.

You can put documented facts in front of someone, and they’ll dismiss them because their favorite influencer said otherwise.

And the saddest part?

We don’t even realize how much of our attention we’ve surrendered.

I’m not saying technology is evil. Hell, I use it every day.

But somewhere along the way, we started confusing being connected with being present.

We have a thousand ways to communicate and still struggle to listen.

What If the Aliens Were Us?

Here’s where Disclosure Day really got under my skin.

There’s a woman in the movie who can look at people and seemingly experience something of their lives.

Their struggles. Their emotions. The things they’re carrying that nobody else notices.

And what does she do with this extraordinary ability?

Does she tell them how to become billionaires?

Does she give them the secrets of the universe?

No.

She tells someone to go to the game because somebody needs them there.

She tells someone else to buy the card.

Simple things.

Ordinary things.

Things that mean absolutely everything to the person waiting on the other side.

And suddenly I had a thought.

What if the aliens were a metaphor for the compassionate side of humanity that we’ve kept locked away?

What if the people terrified of disclosure weren’t afraid of extraterrestrial intelligence?

What if they were afraid of a world where people genuinely understood one another?

Because it’s a hell of a lot harder to exploit someone when you can feel their suffering.

It’s harder to justify cruelty when you understand the pain it causes.

And it’s harder to control people through fear when they start recognizing one another as human beings instead of enemies.

Now, that’s my interpretation. I’m not claiming Spielberg intended every bit of it.

But damn, it makes you think.

You Don’t Know Until You Know

I’ve been a registered nurse for more than three decades.

I’ve seen suffering. I’ve studied diseases. I’ve helped people through some of the worst moments of their lives.

And I used to think I understood PTSD.

I knew the terminology. I understood the clinical side. I thought I understood how people could manage it.

Then I experienced PTSD following my own battle with COVID in 2020.

And brother, let me tell you something.

Knowing about suffering and living through suffering are two entirely different educations.

Things I once thought were controllable suddenly weren’t so simple.

My perspective changed.

Not because everything I’d learned was wrong, but because there was a dimension of the experience I hadn’t understood.

It’s the same reason someone recovering from addiction can sometimes reach another struggling person in a way a textbook never could.

Professional knowledge matters. Absolutely.

But lived experience can open doors that credentials alone cannot.

And that’s why I keep coming back to one question:

How the hell can you teach if you refuse to be taught?

Sometimes the person who changes your understanding isn’t standing behind a podium.

They’re sitting across from you, telling you what their life actually feels like.

All you have to do is shut up long enough to listen.

Maybe We Didn’t Lose Faith in God

There’s another moment in the movie that stayed with me.

A nun suggests that perhaps someone hasn’t lost faith in God.

Perhaps they’ve lost faith in humanity.

Damn.

Now there’s a distinction.

I’ve never believed humanity must be alone in this universe.

If God created a universe filled with countless galaxies, why couldn’t He have created life elsewhere?

Discovering extraterrestrial intelligence wouldn’t disprove God.

It might simply remind us how little we understand about His creation.

And maybe humanity needs that reminder.

We spend so much time congratulating ourselves on being intelligent.

We’ve split atoms. Walked on the moon. Built machines that can process unimaginable amounts of information.

And yet we still struggle with a lesson Jesus taught two thousand years ago.

Love your neighbor.

Not just the neighbor who votes like you.

Not just the neighbor who worships like you.

Not just the neighbor who agrees with everything you say.

Your neighbor.

And love isn’t simply a word we throw around when it’s convenient.

Love requires action.

It requires humility.

It requires recognizing that another person’s pain matters even when we don’t completely understand it.

That’s what I find so compelling about the idea that an advanced civilization might consider empathy its greatest achievement.

Not faster spacecraft.

Not bigger weapons.

Not unlimited wealth.

Empathy.

Maybe we’ve been measuring advancement with the wrong damn ruler.

Praying for Time

In 1990, George Michael released Praying for Time.

Think about that.

1990. 1990.

Before TikTok. Before smartphones. Before social media turned every disagreement into a spectator sport.

And he was already singing about greed, poverty, indifference, and a world losing its moral compass.

Listen to that song today.

It doesn’t sound like a warning about some distant future.

It sounds like the evening news.

But I hear something else in that title.

Praying for Time.

Yes, we’re praying because we’ve made a mess of things.

But we’re also praying for more time because maybe, just maybe, we can still fix this.

We haven’t lost our capacity for compassion.

We’ve buried it beneath noise, distractions, pride, and the endless pursuit of more.

More money.

More followers.

More attention.

More stuff.

When was the last time we stopped long enough to ask whether any of it was making us happier?

Or kinder?

Or better human beings?

Put the Damn Phone Down

Here’s something to think about.

You can text somebody “I love you” a hundred times a day.

Hearts. Kisses. Cute little emojis.

Beautiful.

But what happens when you get home?

Do you put the phone down?

Do you look that person in the eyes?

Do you ask how their day went—and actually listen to the answer?

Do you show up for the game?

Buy the card?

Sit beside someone who’s hurting without immediately trying to fix them?

Because if we’re constantly announcing our love but never making ourselves available to demonstrate it, what exactly are we doing?

Is it love, or just another reassurance algorithm?

I’m not suggesting we throw away our phones and return to the Stone Age.

I like indoor plumbing and antibiotics as much as the next guy.

I’m saying we need to remember what all this progress was supposed to be for.

Go outside.

Enjoy the scenery.

Have dinner without a screen between you and your family.

Listen to your kids.

Hold your spouse.

Visit your parents while you still can.

Stop and smell the actual fucking rose instead of taking a picture of it for strangers to like.

Because someday, the notifications will stop.

And the people who mattered won’t remember how many followers you had.

They’ll remember whether you were there.

The Real Disclosure

Maybe someday we’ll discover we’re not alone in the universe.

Maybe we’ll find life on another world.

Maybe some of the mysteries we’ve debated for centuries will finally have answers.

I don’t know.

But I know this.

We don’t need extraterrestrials to teach us how to listen.

We don’t need advanced technology to tell someone they’re loved.

And we don’t need a message from the heavens to understand that greed, hatred, and cruelty are destroying things we should be protecting.

We’ve already been given the capacity to choose differently.

Call it faith.

Call it free will.

Call it being human.

Whatever you call it, we have a responsibility to use it.

And maybe the real lesson of Disclosure Day isn’t that humanity needs to prepare for visitors from another world.

Maybe it’s that we need to prepare to finally recognize one another.

Because the greatest undiscovered frontier may not be somewhere beyond the stars.

It may be the distance between knowing how to love and actually choosing to do it.

So here’s my challenge.

Today, put the phone down.

Look someone in the eyes.

Ask how they’re doing.

And for once in your life, don’t just wait for your turn to speak.

Listen.

You might discover an entire world you never knew existed.

And you won’t need a spaceship to get there.

Empathy lets us see. Compassion moves us to act. Love is what we choose to do next.

We’re still praying for time.

Let’s make sure we do something worthwhile with it.

— Saint Dirty Face™

Stay Dirty. Stay Human.™ ☮️❤️🤘