Last week was a hard one for me. I did not have any sort of personal tragedies or difficulties; rather, I ached with my fellow citizens as we all do when faced with collective grief. Forest fires. Possible fire tornadoes. Hurricanes. A continuing pandemic with no end in sight, with over 58 million people having filed jobless claims since it began. Another Black man murdered by a police officer and the ensuing response. The death of Chadwick Boseman. And throughout all of it, the speakers at the Republican National Convention, many of whom are our current lawmakers, painting a picture of peace, health, and prosperity for all.
I feel like I’m crazy. Looking at my old posts, it’s almost quaint that my biggest worry in January was the weather and waiting for daffodils. Now, I worry that we have descended into a dystopian landscape, imagined by Ray Bradbury, George Orwell, and Margaret Atwood. In my heart, I am sure that authoritarian rule is just around the corner, unless we do something to stop it. I am convinced of it because of the dissonance between what I see and hear and what I am told by my leaders.
We deserve better. Every single one of us deserves better. And we cannot make this country better unless we have something to aim for. I was inspired this week by one of the greats, Maya Angelou, in one of her classic poems, “Caged Bird.” An excerpt:
“But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.”
I hope you use your voice to sing past your “bars of rage,” as I will try to do as well. The prompt for this week is this:
“Write about your song as a caged bird. What do you dream of, what do you sing of? What are your goals for our country?”
You have as much or as little time as you would like. See you next week.
References:
- Angelou M. (2020). Caged Bird. [online] Poetry Foundation. Available at: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48989/caged-bird. Accessed 31 Aug. 2020.
More unedited writing of mine. Ten minutes (let’s be serious, more like thirty minutes) about my dreams and my song.
I spent much of this week crying. Thursday morning. Saturday morning. Good, visceral, ugly cries with a scrunched up face and mucus running down my nose, going through tissues like I did when I read The Fault in Our Stars (my copy of the book literally has drops of tears and snot on it…you might not want to borrow it from me). I have no personal reason to cry. I have a good job. I have a beautiful marriage and good friends and a healthy family. Sure, we have had some personal tragedies, but not for a long time.
So I thought about what triggered my tears. Was it sadness? Rage? When did I cry the most? The first time was in watching the Republic National Convention. I had just finished reading The New Jim Crow, the sharp details of systemic racism and mass incarceration fresh in my mind. I had just watched videos of the teenage vigilante walk right past police officers minutes after he had murdered two protesters in Kenosha, WI. He deserves due process per the law, as did Jacob Blake. And then I watched the fear-mongering. The incendiary language. The hate.
And I was angry. But mostly I felt disappointed. And misled. My whole life I had read about other countries and their rulers who were dictators. The corruption. The bribery that it takes to get anything done if it has to do with the government. There are multiple Bollywood movies that detail this very thing, and some of my family in India lives it daily. But I never thought it could happen in the United States. This level of blatant dishonesty. Yes, it was naïve. But generally (and I say this as a very privileged non-Black person), I felt that my government cared about me. That maybe people disagreed on how best to create policy (economics is complicated! As is science! And healthcare! And diplomacy for goodness’ sake!), but they had the best interests of all of us at heart. At the RNC, that plainly wasn’t true.
And then on Saturday I woke up to news that a beloved actor had died. And my tears and my grief weren’t about Chadwick Boseman himself, though he seemed like a lovely, generous, and kind-hearted person. They were about what he represented, what his characters represented. I am, admittedly, the most familiar with Black Panther. But man, what an aspirational place we found in Wakanda. Weapons technology used to maintain peace, not start unnecessary wars. An advanced African civilization untainted by colonialism and racism. And all of that strength and pride in community, in the culture, in doing what is right, even in taking care of their most vulnerable. No, especially in taking care of their most vulnerable.
Now, I may be projecting onto Wakanda my dreams for the United States. I am for sure doing this. But what wonderful dreams. I want us to become the country that my parents dreamt about when they moved here 40 years ago. Even the one that my friends dreamt about when they immigrated within the last decade. One in which we realize and embrace that we have enough for all of us, we just need to learn to share a little better. That we are not constantly striving for greatness, but for goodness. That we don’t judge each other based on our skin color, age, size, sex, sexual orientation, occupation, neighborhood, hair type, tax bracket. But that we appreciate and love and learn from these differences. That we learn to say “I’m sorry” and encourage lively discourse. So we can learn from our mistakes. And constantly work to be better. As individuals, as communities, as states, and as one nation.
And just because we have not done this before in our centuries as a country, does not mean it cannot be done. In using our rage to sing of things unknown, we can make them happen. This is my dream.
Writing for Wellness 