Another Time Today

Remember the time when we were a little freer, our minds were more open to new ideas, and our hearts were more open to not judging others based on differences. Am I imagining a time that wasn’t, a time that only existed in my mind?

I think these might have been only fleeting moments when we all seemed to step closer to each other and to understanding. Then, as suddenly as it came, we were pulled back into the all too familiar grip of division, fear of others, and hate. I know it is human nature, the longing for connection, yet here we are, building barriers, shouting slogans, and tearing at the connective tissues of hope.

Unfortunately, some of the people I once believed I knew, who were part of my inner circle, have changed, and I no longer recognize them. It saddens me, as I have grown older and expanded my own understanding of the world, to realize what it means to be open to new ideas, people, and cultures, just how small some people’s minds truly are. My worldview changed as I traveled and saw the world, while others tightened the cocoon around themselves and demanded that nothing change, or worse, that things return to a time they do not even remember.

Even more importantly, my understanding of how we individually affect others expanded, and I became more self-aware of the impact that both acts of kindness and acts of cruelty can have. I walked the grounds of Buchenwald, Dachau, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. I was soul-sick for days; something in my spirit folded up. As a young person, I visited Southern plantations and warehouses where human beings were bought and sold, beaten and belittled simply for their higher melanin. Their humanity ignored in favor of a monstrous false layering of ‘not like us’, therefore inferior to justify the hundreds of years of brutality this nation imposed upon a people they stole from another land, beat, and bred into inhuman enslavement.

By the time I was old enough to understand there was something fundamentally wrong in the world, I had begun to question my place in it. I questioned everything. My place in my family, how I fit with my peers, and where I fit in the world around me. My conclusion? I didn’t fit anywhere; I always seemed oddly outside of those around me. I rebelled, and I paid dearly for my rebellion. I broke my own heart more times than I can count. I had my spirit and my body broken by those who wanted me to fit into boxes that made them comfortable. Yet even when I thought there was nothing left of me, something rose up and fought, demanded I survive.

There are days even now that I question my place in the world, and I wonder why I fought so hard to get this far. There are mornings when I wake up after a restless night of bad dreams, where my body aches, my heart hurts, and my spirit is lonely; I wonder out loud why I fought so hard? There are days when my solitude weighs heavily on me, and I wonder aloud, why am I so alone now when I poured so much into so many for so long?

There are times when my spirit feels weighted down, and my heart is cracking. Those are times when I remember there was another time when it wasn’t like this, and I wonder if maybe the reason some of us from that time are still here is as a reminder of those days when we were walking toward something better? I think maybe it is, and those of us who still remember are the quiet reminder that it is worth the fight, even as we break inside.

Yes, it’s terrible today, and it feels as if everything has gone sideways, but some of us remember a different time. We remember, and we know there is a better way, but we also know we failed when we turned our backs and became passive. We own this failure; we may not have voted for it, but we failed to stand up and demand better, so we own it. Now, we must own correcting fifty years of ongoing and persistent destruction of everything we fought for.

If we don’t stand up now, tomorrow is lost, and the promise of this nation, however imperfect, will disappear forever and for all of us.