… what do we do with wayward children when they run amuck, lead themselves astray, act in vicious, awful ways and take misbehavior to a level the devil would cringe over?
The problem with healing and doing inner work and allowing oneself to feel actual, authentic emotions is that you don’t get to pick when you feel stuff. You don’t get to turn your emoting on and off at whim. The problem with allowing oneself to BE a spirit living a very human existence is that you don’t get to be numb. When tragedy happens around you and not necessarily to you, you feel the harrowing and pain as though it was you. When someone is beaten or battered, you feel the blows and heal the bruises as though they were your own. When someone is ridiculed for their decency and principal, you are as offended as though it was you in ridicule’s wake. The problem with being of LOVE is being so IN LOVE and connected to the other spirits on this planet is that you empathize and connect with them on a level that the sleep sheep who also populate this planet cannot yet relate.
Now what comes with this. What comes with this is the seeming duality of living a joy full existence, while at the same time embodying what Octavia E. Butler once described in her novel Parable of the Sower. This thing she called hyperempathy– “the ability to feel the perceived pain and other sensations of others”. Sometimes on a daily basis. What comes with this is seeing what shouldn’t have to be seen. The things so many hurt souls do to inflict unnecessary pain on others, for no other reason than they can. What comes with this is not anger, necessarily, when things among people run afoul. It’s a stifling sadness. An aching of knowing the TRUTH and knowing still that so many do not know. What comes with understanding our connection, is knowing too that even the greatest and most evolved of us are connected to the seemingly worst of us. WE are not better than they. WE simply understand the law of life better. The sadness comes from knowing that their not knowing slows down the advancement of humanity for the ALL of us. The sadness comes from doing great work, and seeing the leagues of people who would not even know to benefit from it. They can be called sleep sheep. They can be called your brother or sister, mother or father, neighbor or child. They’re all kin after all.
So what do we do with wayward children when they run amuck, lead themselves astray, act in vicious, awful ways and take misbehavior to a level the devil would cringe over? Do we scold them? Do we put them in time out? Do we beat them? Do we cuss them? Do we put them in jail? Do we string them up like strange fruit? Do we take them out back and do whatever comes to mind at the time? What do we do with wayward souls who don’t even know they are wayward? Who don’t even know that their behavior is unacceptable? Who have been taught by what we as a society have shown them. Our viciousness. Our ugly words. Our hurt acted out on their bodies. What do we do with people whose lives are just as valuable as our own, but who behave in ways that would speak to the contrary?
The truth is, I am not, nor do I want to be the spiritual and human dignity police. It’s not my charge in life. My charge is to be a trailblazer and a game changer, not a ticket writer. Mostly because we all can be called out for a “flag on play” for any number of our human disgraces.
It seems unfair that good people should be burdened with the likes of the dastardly, doesn’t it? It seems unfair that those of us who know better and do better aren’t simply allowed to scoff at those who are out of control in so many ways. It doesn’t seem fair that we who know who we are and act accordingly should be the keepers of the masses who don’t. Those who hurt. Those who abuse. Those who bully. Those who use ugly in every interaction and call it love. Those who procreate to the point of ridiculousness, caring not about the outcome of their cavalier child bearing and rearing. Those whose actions can on most accounts deem them actual burdens of society in most–if not all–of the ways that means. Those who take to all forms of social media and persistently pollute good work with every amount of venom for people who have nothing to do with them. And use the ugliest words to season their “dialogue”. “BITCH. NIGGA. HOE. FUCK YOU. SHUT THAT SHIT DOWN. BITCH. I’LL FUCK YOU UP. I’LL KILL YOU NIGGA.” This is how they interact with their friends. This is also how they interact with intellectual royalty. Why, you may be asking?
I know why. I actually do know why. But the answer isn’t as simple as saying these two words together: SELF LOATHING. Because those two words only spell out part of the picture. There’s a lot more to it like: LACKING SPIRITUAL DIGNITY and LOW SELF VALUE. There’s also: UNHEALED HURTS, EMOTIONAL IMMATURITY, and THE INABILITY TO CHOOSE RIGHT THOUGHTS, DEEDS, and ACTIONS. There’s much, much more of course. Much more. The greatest of which I can only assume must be NOT KNOWING LOVE.
Anyone who truly knows LOVE can’t logically hold on to any of the above. It’s impossible. The way actual LOVE actually works is like a light shined on darkness. Everyone knows that the two cannot be present simultaneously. You have light or you have dark. There is no duality. You can’t have it both ways.
Life isn’t a competition of who can be more pious, righteous and point out the most human indiscretions in others. Life is about becoming MORE. It’s about the journey to awesome and teaching what we know along the way. It’s about contributing to the continuing conversation with some amount of decency and moral justness–which varies, of course.
As I began writing this post, I was literally in tears. They began to form as I tweeted about my upset from reading great articles on important matters and being side swiped by the “blog trolls” who like to stir the pot with their viciousness, not adding value to the discussion, but merely side swiping to seem to themselves relevant. I went on my now infamous Twitter soapbox for 20 minutes and then I thought I was done. The tears ACTUALLY formed when I came across an interview Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal had with Dream Hampton.
The interview I watched isn’t actually relevant to this post, except that while watching it, I was compelled to Google Dream Hampton’s name. That’s when I saw them. There were several blog posts that told the story of a beautiful 15 year old girl who happened to take a picture with Beyoncé. What a thrill right? Except, that picture wasn’t meant for the world. It was meant for her family and friends on Facebook. Because that girl standing gloriously with Beyoncé was Dream Hampton’s daughter, somebody lifted it from her page and posted it on a Tumblr with the caption “ewww”. And then loads of other such derogatory comments followed about the looks of this little girl enjoying a glorious moment with one of her heroes. WTF? I mean, ?!!!!!! Okay. That’s whack. But that’s also not the worst of it. Somebody else tweets the pic from the initial Tumblr with another nasty comment. Dream asks that person to remove the photo because it was meant to be private AND that’s her child. Then. This very weird, very vile, very vicious attack happens by a group of grown people who seem to have their own vendetta against a little girl and that girl’s mother. I actually can’t explain it. The whole thing was so surreal and crazy to me. I kept thinking, where do these people even come from and who raised them? This one person actually tweeted to Dream Hampton, verbatim: “YOU A WEAK BITCH.”
No one died here, sure. But, death can’t be more painful that living with pain inflicted unjustly by someone who can’t care about anything–not even themselves. That is a pain you can’t even feel sorry for. But it is cry worthy.
I caught myself with my aghast face looking at the screen for far too long trying to make sense of where that came from. I was compelled to research that person’s timeline and see what spawned it. Did it matter? Not at all. I just needed to see the logic in it. I needed to know what that was. Where that ugly came from. I needed it to make sense. What I got was nothing. NO reason. There was a lot of defending her position with cop outs and grand standing and whatever else people tend to do when they are caught with ugly deeds all over their hands and face like blood. It’s that thing that happens when apologizing makes the most sense, but the ego can’t admit wrong doing and so the grandstanding happens instead. “Yeah, I did it and what? I didn’t care about that bitch or her bitch daughter.” That kind of stuff. And my favorite cop out, “people blew it out of proportion without researching the facts.” Well. I just took a breath right there because I did research the facts. I followed the twitter trail, if you will, and the facts play out exactly like a murder mystery without the mystery. And it sucks so badly, I can hardly form the words around it properly.
I mentioned before, I know what it is. It’s as clear to me as this computer screen and the keyboard I’m typing on. Every amount of my being is in loathe of this. The whole deal. The ugliness about it. That blatant disregard for other beings. No one died here, sure. But, death can’t be more painful that living with pain inflicted unjustly by someone who can’t care about anything–not even themselves. That is a pain you can’t even feel sorry for. But it is cry worthy. Why, you ask? They’re just words. They’re just silly people who don’t know any better. Why would such a thing woe you so, Envy?
Because before recently, I couldn’t empathize in the way I can now. Before I embarked on this beautiful journey I’m on, there were so many parts of me so numbed by my own pain, I couldn’t right tell when pain was in and around me. Nor did I care much. I had moments of passion by the downright unjust, but nothing like I know now. Nothing like the connection I have now to the plight of the “every(wo)man”. It’s a gift when you find your way to it. It’s a gift because you see clearer than you ever did how our seemingly simplest actions effect and affect us all. It’s a gift because when you can see with clear eyes and feel with an unstained spirit, you can change and be the change you want to see in the world. In short, you can rule yourself.
There is a part of me, when I sat down to write this piece who wanted to call out the names of every culprit who was a part of that Twitter thing I just mentioned. I wrote down every one of their Twitter handles and I had fully prepared to write an open letter that spoke exactly to them and all the reasons why we all ain’t free. The thing is, I don’t have all the Twitter handles of the leagues of people who write heinous blog comments and quasi-racist rants, and divisive toned articles, and those people who think because they learned to write and speak, that what comes forth from their fingers and mouths adds any value at all to life itself. I decided that if I were to direct this post at the Beyoncé/Dream Hampton/Awesome Daughter Bandits, I would also have to address by name all of the other blog and article and hate speech wackadoodles who populate the planet as a whole. Honey. This entire site for at least 40 years’ time would be filled with Twitter handles. AND. I still wouldn’t have named them all.
… when you can see with clear eyes and feel with an unstained spirit, you can change and be the change you want to see in the world. In short, you can rule yourself.
The truth is, I am not, nor do I want to be the spiritual and human dignity police. It’s not my charge in life. My charge is to be a trailblazer and a game changer, not a ticket writer. Mostly because we all can be called out for a “flag on play” for any number of our human disgraces. Life isn’t a competition of who can be more pious, righteous and point out the most human indiscretions in others. Life is about becoming MORE. It’s about the journey to awesome and teaching what we know along the way. It’s about contributing to the continuing conversation with some amount of decency and moral justness–which varies, of course. It’s about being able to see how rotten we’ve become. Accept where we are, forgive, make different and maybe better choices. I cannot control what hurt people say or do to hurt other people as they have been hurt. I can control me. AND I can be a part of ending this vicious violence cycle with me. By engaging Twitter and blog and news site thugs, what does that make me? A thug thugger? A thug hater? A hate warrior? Negative. It makes me a part of the problem.
I have been told recently that we affect change by teaching those who want to change. Not to say that we leave our less receptive or very wayward brothers and sisters to their wayward ways. Yes, we are our brothers and sisters keepers. AND. All of us have a relative who is simply lost. No amount of begging or soapboxing or calling attention to or pleading with is going to get them on path until they’re ready to get to the path themselves. You can pray they will. But when folk are addicted to pain, inflicting and continuing it in their lives, rehab only helps when they choose to be there. Everyone has their time. We all find our way eventually. Our role in this is to teach those who want to be taught and LOVE still the rest.
The moral of this story? No idea. Just some food for thought. Thank you for reading this though. Peace and abundant “calling them out only makes it worse” blessings. Love, -e-