“It does not matter to me:
Wherever you are grieving
Whether Paris, Damascus, Jerusalem, Bamako,
Mexico or Beirut or New York City
My heart, too, is bruised
And dragging.”
– Alice Walker
Remember when the pandemic started, and some people were very upset businesses closed? Those same people have been super happy as businesses start opening up again.
Except, no. No, they have not.
Some have been just as unhappy to discover it costs more money to run a business in the midst of a pandemic, and now those services cost a little extra. And while some people will not stay home to save a life, they will stay home to save a buck. Or so they threaten.
It’s a bad look, either way. A root touch-up can’t save it.
As I’ve mentioned in the past, I wasn’t very thrilled about “pausing” either, but somehow I moved quickly through the stages of, well…I think it was grief. Nobody died, but the next few months were full of plans that were suddenly gone with nothing but a giant question mark in their place. I moved quickly from denial to anger to bargaining to depression. Within a week I’d reached acceptance. It was a new experience for me. The sadness still ebbs and flows, but I’m dealing.
Those people raging?
Stuck in anger and denial, bargaining with a natural world that won’t cater to our manmade society.
I’ve realized in conversations with others that another issue (one that predates the pandemic) also involves a sort of grieving process. Western New York has been making national news in the midst of everything else, first because cops were hit by a car, then because a video of an elderly man pushed by a couple cops in Buffalo contradicted the initial report he slipped and fell. It’s a reminder even white people can become victims of social hierarchies despite privilege because there’s always a bigger fish.
I read an article saying it’s a good thing if people confronting the reality of systemic racism for the first time feel miserable. Someone took such offense to the idea they should feel guilty, but the article said nothing about guilt. If you have empathy for others, you can’t help but despair at injustice. I think that’s the problem for many people. They deny uncomfortable realities because if they accept them, they know they have to take action or risk feeling worse; but all avoiding the grief accomplishes is dragging out everyone’s suffering, and too many have already suffered too much. We all need to work through the stages to find a path forward.
Today would have been Breonna Taylor’s 27th birthday. So far there still have not been any charges, but the FBI is reopening her case. As bleak as national circumstances appear, I think I feel a shift in the winds. People who have previously been silent seem less afraid to speak up and speak out, even if the attempts are sometimes clumsy, and some people who have previously been among the more hostile voices seem less afraid to listen.
The work may never be done, but it’s not for nothing.
