Pushing Back
My friend Michelle passed along Susan David's article on courage in the face of fear. What dawned on me as I read it was that talking about the pain and discomfort of doing hard things is as important as talking about the why and how of doing hard things.
My anger against injustice renders me speechless at times. Perhaps it's more accurate to say that I choose speechlessness because the language that would come out of my mouth is raw, unapologetic, rage-filled and rife with expletives. Maybe that's called for at times but I don't think it moves the needle much. What I hear from my Black friends over and over again is that I need to go into white spaces - spaces I inhabit easily - and talk in a way that is understood in those spaces to help people think differently. Yelling doesn't do that.
I was so angry at the obvious disparity between the media coverage regarding the submarine implosion versus the shipwreck in Greece. So livid I could barely talk about it. It's a tragedy when anyone dies - I have nothing more to say than that regarding the submarine. But for fuck's sake. Five hundred humans died on the capsized boat in Greece. Five HUNDRED. 500! While people who could have helped - but didn't - watched. And yet the media focused almost squarely on the submarine.
But my takeaway now is not to yell about it. It's to clarify my message that we are all - every single one of us - in control of how we show up to EVERYTHING. Including what we digest, what we focus on, what we buy into. There is no them. There is just each one of us - buying the bullshit or pushing back against it.
Now here's the light - a thank you to all of you wonderful people! ❤️🔥
