11:30am
I log off my work laptop and stare at my personal one. I’m unsure what to do. I start typing. I don’t know how this blog will turn out, but I do feel the need for catharsis.
The world seems to be going down in flames. Our country literally is.
Each morning I wake up and feel compelled to open one of many news apps before I even get out of bed. The last few days have been another round of evening lootings, protests and fires. I feel safe in my home in my little neighborhood, but I want to help – don’t know how and feel helpless, depressed and anxious most of the days as a result.
I take a few deep breaths and get up oh so very slowly. Since not having to physically go into the office the mornings have been so much less rushed. It’s a welcome change to feeling harried from trying to get out the door. But it came at a price of lives, justice and the perceived feeling of safety and peace. Maybe it’s a good thing to expose what wasn’t really there as a safety net.
COVID-19 seems to have split an already divided society. I literally unfriended quite a bit of friends and family members from social media after reading such a barrage of insulting things about stereotypes of people. Yes, perhaps it could be seen as funny; but in a time like this and with working in healthcare – it’s not something to joke about, question or start putting up hoax flags about. I felt it to be utterly disturbing.
The past week since George Floyd has been even more disturbing. My husband has taken to looking up how to be a good leader during these times. He is prefacing each meeting he hosts by saying that silence is it’s own terrible statement, and then provides meeting members a platform to voice what is on their mind. After almost every meeting whether I’m working or not, he has been coming over to me and talking about feeling the need to connect. It’s kind of what is missing from society – connection. Not just because of COVID, but because people have all seemed to put “others” in a box and through the power of the Internet and social media have been able to only view what they’d like to in their own “special” box. Instead of all this advanced communication bringing us closer and able to understand one other as a human race, it’s driven us apart.
The riots and looting are not too much of a surprise. I’m white but I cannot express how much I feel for my fellow human black souls. While I don’t agree with destruction of property, I empathize but never understand the overwhelming feeling of being silenced for so long. How can they NOT be angry about the injustices that are all around us? It’s not as if it went away with the abolition of slavery or the 60’s movement for civil rights. Has it gotten better? Yes. But we are far from any place that is really equal. How long should anyone stand by quietly and accept a crappy reality?
I never even heard of white privilege until I was mandated to attend a class in 2017 to be able to volunteer to teach yoga at domestic violence shelters. It came as a shock. Not because I am ignorant, but because it has never been brought up to me in any format. In a way I feel guilty that I never understood the societal safety and validation I feel. It makes me want to cry for others that don’t feel that. We are all just so human in the same way dogs are just dogs and they have different fur colors. What does it matter? And why did humans along the way somewhere decide that it did?
COVID has exposed so much of what is wrong. Back in early March I wrote a blog about how Social Justice is not Socialism. What is wrong with national healthcare? Was our system working? Did it ever? I was seeing too much of this meme on Facebook and thinking that my friends were losing their minds.
Little did I know that a week or so later our entire system would be put to the test. It just exposed how much it wasn’t. And instead of coming together as humans to determine what seems to be a fact that it sucks that people can lose their jobs (hence healthcare) in a heartbeat, that our black communities were more at risk because of their access to dependable news/sources/jobs, and that the country was not exactly booming when after two weeks into a pandemic many individuals and families alike had any savings to count on – we as a country DIVIDED! I’m still scratching my head about how. I know we all agree it sucks, but how did we turn that into a division of beliefs and political ones at that yet again?
Then throw in Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd…
I’m sorry, at no time and ESPECIALLY during these times should any leader be promoting violence, egging on protestors for a valid international health initiative (masks) and scorning peaceful protests for justice. It’s disgusting and I’m embarrassed to be considered a human with equal rights to some of our leaders. Not all opinions should count if they are hurtful to anyone else. Leaders do not have the right to say or do hurtful things because of their position.
I want to help but I don’t know how. I’ve been wanting to. For today I’m going to just put my despair out there via this blog; and perhaps weed the garden before it rains. And think. Think about how little ol’ me can help my fellow humans, because the light in me sees and honors the light in each and every one of them. Namaste.
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