And yet you can smell the smoke coming off of many people: that's the scent of their circuits being fried by an overload of energy combined with inaction. It's the smell of driving with the brakes on.
To participate and to be available, you'll need to get over any fear you may have of being seen, being heard, standing out, standing up, being outstanding, being too much or not enough. These are just hang-ups, which is like hanging up on yourself.
The paradox of participating, of counting yourself in, is that you would have to open up and be vulnerable somewhere other than a "safe zone." To the contrary, you would be exposing yourself to, uh, something—really, to your own feelings, and to change—right when everything seems so dangerous.
Yet to the extent things seem dangerous, that's likely to be a direct function of any armoring that you're carrying around. The more you defend against something, the realer it seems; but what exactly are you defending, and against what?
One other thing: It's vital to live in a bigger world of more important priorities than what you may currently inhabit. There is a world, and it's larger than your world. To live, it's urgently necessary to give up pettiness: such as the obsession with small transgressions, being perpetually offended, or being riveted to what's familiar.
It's necessary to be flexible, lest you break. The less you flex and bend, the stiffer the wind feels.
People are figuring out that this all comes down to sex. To some, that's the scariest news of all, to some it's the best news of all, and to others, it's just not news: in particular, to purists who make attacking and undermining sex their primary agenda. Contaminating sex is the very most important tool of fascists, of tyrants, of priests and other cops.
Sex is the ultimate anarchy, because you just have to go with it: no choreography, no expectations, and all that planning and control just fall apart. That's just how it is. Then something else comes out: your voice, your love, your sweat, your tears, your music, your art, your desire to be alive, and your gratitude for being so.
Count yourself in. Do it now.
