Hi Kids. I’m back.
It’s been a rough one, hasn’t it? The world seems to be either sick, dying or in chaos. Or, you know, just ignoring everything - wear a mask, read a book. Of course for a lot of us who spend even a minor portion of our time chillin’ on the internet, we manage to be at least relatively unscathed by the fiesta of madness that is the year of our Lord two-thousand and twenty. Or… are we?
What has never sat right with me, is the desire to treat every single world event as though nothing even remotely analogous to these events has ever occurred in the entirety of human history. For we 21st Century folk, unaccustomed to inconvenience as we are, there is a distinct and noticeable tendency to go full Chicken Little. Do children still read Chicken Little? We may have never experienced a lockdown before but in the halcyon days of the past that certain corners of our political landscape seem intent on shoving down our throats, they had things like Spanish Flu (actual origin, a military base in the US) and conscription. If we’re all struggling so much with sitting at home with our loved ones (and someones we love a little less than before), with uncomfortably full stomachs and a new streaming platform every week, I can’t help but imagine the soul-crushing fear of getting a letter in the post one day with a time, date and a military base to which you are expected to report.
But this, too, is a trap. To compare one’s suffering with anyone else’s; it’s a hole never to venture down. Jeanette Winterson once observed that love is not a commodity…it doesn’t have to be in short supply, and sadly the same is true for pain. Pain is useless. It doesn’t purify or nurture or justify anything. The only thing it inspires, in the best of best case scenarios, is the blind desire for that pain to stop. At worst, it warps its victims into the tools of its self-propagation. And around and around we go.
By this point, if you’re even still reading this, you will probably be asking yourself what I’m asking myself as I write this: ok, so… what’s your point? Great question, by the way. I suppose the point is, I’ve been guilty of looking inward, of internalising too much, of getting so caught up in my own sadness that I’ve been incapable of coping, let alone of expressing myself. I’ve tried all the tricks. I’ve had meditated, had media cleanses, knitted. But it’s time to plug back in.
As a mixed race person in the world, I feel a responsibility to present in a certain way. Always have; likely always will. It’s not that it’s insincere but, like a lot of things here in Internetland, it’s certainly curated. Watching the flood of sudden wokeness, the “sudden” personal reckonings with institutional racism and its omnipresence, I’ve been relieved but I’ve also been so bloody tired. So disappointed that what I’ve been screaming about my entire life was so clearly ignored completely by those around me.
But behind the sadness, the tears and the hopelessness, I’ve been so inspired by the protests and the people organising to help our human race become better. I’m challenging myself to express myself here. In whatever form that takes. I’m letting loose a little bit and let’s see what happens.
Black Lives Matter. Black voices matter. Wear a mask. Read a book.
Peace x