Where have I been you ask? I’ve been exhausted by living life. So much is happening ALL. THE. TIME!
Am I the only one who has felt like life has been a lot recently?! Not my life personally, but life as a whole - war, recession, scandal... I barely have the chance to process one thing, before I need to engage in the next.
It feels like, since the COVID-19 pandemic and the madness that was the year 2020, there has been a massive increase in mind boggling events. It’s as though, all the things that were put on pause because of the lockdown, are pouring out at an unnatural speed, much like a burst dam, and my mind has taken some time to absorb the events.
It goes without saying that our minds and hearts were not made to process this much, this quickly. Many are barely able to process the events of their own lives, much less that of the thousands of people we have access to because of the internet and social media. It can get quite overwhelming.
I’ve made no secret of how hard the last few years have been for me (learn more) and thankfully things have improved drastically, but the exposure to world events finally had its way with me, and required me to take time to refocus on my bubble of existence, rather than the world at large.
There’s a helplessness that comes with witnessing an injustice you have little power to prevent or stop. Your heart aches with empathy and your mind burns with zeal, but you are limited in the things you can physically do. As a black person, I encounter this too often.
As I watch the tragedies unfolding in Congo and Palestine (among many others!), and the way so many countries have been openly complicit, I feel so powerless. I am also reminded that all the atrocities we learn about in history classes at school occurred just like this. I wrongfully believed that with better resources for the masses, i.e. internet, we would be able to do more, quickly. The global mobilising of citizens after George Floyd was killed due to social media spreading awareness, lead to the first criminal conviction of its kind. Social media amplified the #MeToo movement in a way that the founder, Tarana Burke, would never have imagined, and it lead to global attitudes around sexual assault changing for the better. These changes, and many others like them, are some of the reasons I will always be grateful for Twitter (that new name is not used in this household! 😒).
The changes lead me to believe that the masses had the power to create change at unprecedented speeds, but, as I watch the most graphic images of war I have ever seen coming out of a Palestine, and I count the days since we have been made aware anew of the ongoing genocide (this started over 75 years ago), I can’t understand why or how it hasn’t stopped. Not a temporary ceasefire, a full stop! Why, after everything we have been taught through history, and the moral high ground these tales are told from, that same demographic are doing nothing.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of carrying the world on your shoulders, and it is definitely our responsibility to initiate, support, encourage and carry out change, but one must never lose sight of the fact that some things are bigger than you, and it’s ok to only carry as much as you can.
It’s important to maintain perspective; some problems, like racism, sexism and poverty, are intertwined in our societies’ make-up, and they require more than one lifetime to resolve. Given where we are now, we still have a way to go, so the goal for us should be to push the needle as far as possible in the desired direction, and leave structures in place for the next generation to pick up the work where we left off.
So, where have I been? I've been taking my own advice - while taking care of others, remember to take care of yourself.
Not Rude, Honest
xxx
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