Numb, Dumb, and High!

The events of this week have been weighing on my spirit.  Not for any reasons different for most and many that are.  It's incredibly challenging to manage feelings for something going on in the world that resulted from injustice while living the results of the same roots of madness yourself.  Yes, I don't have the extreme of a murdered black youth lying in the street AND I do have the walking zombie whose spirit has already been snatched.  I heard Al Sharpton claim our spirit has not broken, just bent.  Bend how far before it breaks?  I think we have long ago past the breaking point and continue to show signs of our brokenness.  I think most of what we do when reacting to a broken system is how people respond when they are broken and don't know it yet.  Addressing that toll on the spirit, the rerun we are in that rarely results in something different, seems so shallow an expectation to hold after experiencing the tragedies black people endure in North America as a result of white supremacy.  Hearing the rhetoric that labels our feelings as irrational, or something we should learn to get over, seems exhausting.  I get why survival would have me just stay Numb, Dumb, and High in order to manage it all.

Why engage?  Why get involved?  Why bother?  Simplistically complex -- there are not easy answers to complex feelings, layers of upset that make the body, mind, and spirit physically react leading to a FIGHT or FLIGHT response.  I was saved from spiralling into depression this week by a Mexican Proverb:

"They tried to bury us but the didn't know we were seeds!"

With each generation, a contribution, a legacy has been left that forces movement, transformation.  If what I believe is TRUE, people can not remain blind to injustice forever.  For those who experience it, the pace of change will never be fast enough.  There will never be enough to anesthetize the pain of the festering wound.  There will always be allies who empathize and are activated into action.  There will always be young people, not yet cynical and jaded, still piss'n fire, whose back's the revolution will occur on.  There will always be those who will offer their sacrifices to the cause.  And the cycle and cypher will continue to present opportunity to defend the DREAM.

And the minds who will work to create anew from the ashes of the old will be revealed.  Justice cannot afford to remain blind to oppression being one of the greatest motivating and innovative forces in the history of the world.  Cigarillos, Toy Guns, Dark Hallways, Loud Music, Hoodies, Lousy Cigarettes, Skittles, A Wallet, Iced Tea, Wrong Turns, Wrong Neighbourhoods, Picking up Your Kids, Bachelor Party, Poor Choice, No Choice, Any Choice, Defending Yourself, can't stop the show.  They all stand as examples of one understanding so awesomely articulated by my friend Deborah Peterson Small:

"White Supremacy should be treated as a public health crisis that endangers all of our lives in order to maintain the status quo"

It comes with heavy doses of HISTORIC AMNESIA so we victim blame and we commit 'Wag-the-Dog' distraction techniques fanning the flames of hopelessness so we don't fight back in the ways we can.  Instead, we fight each other.  It cements us in our Privilege, ignoring TRUTHS we don't want to face building up our apathy so there is no fight at all in the century of self.

It's all an illusion.  You see, on many days I do wish I had taken the BLUE PILL so I too can walk around in the general malaise and apathy of blissful ignorance, numb and high inside of the Matrix.  But I didn't.  I took the RED PILL.  I chose!!!!!  I chose my right to DREAM.  To DREAM a world I have the power to make real.  Not for any other reason than my unwillingness to sacrifice another generation of young people to some BULLSHIT!!!!!

Revolution will happen on the backs of young people and I'd rather see young people ready themselves to stand in their greatness then to lie in the street helplessly believing this is their fate.  So, as I manage trying to find a home for my homeless feelings, I know,

"Justice is What LOVE looks like In Public"- Cornel West