Who took his humanity?
The steely eyes staring down onlookers calling for its return.
One can’t create an object out of living beings without first having left themselves.
To re-inhabit the Self is to enter the haunted and the holy and give each equal measure.
I keep hearing the reverberations of James Baldwin, ‘until white men feel their own pain, they will always need a negro’.
If this is the case, what in each of us needs to be faced? To approach instead of reproach that deep vulnerability of uncertainty and longing. The feared broken parts that might reveal our unworthiness, or the lack of ‘fitness’ to survive.
It is this. The repeated rejection, the inner unworthiness, that requires an ‘other’ to oppose in order to build a false sense of mighty self, which leaves us empty and enabled to be the terrifying steely eyes devoid of feeling the pulse of another.
The taking of humanity begs the question how do we preserve it. There’s been a lot of fighting going on lately. One is the American fight for liberty. We have a right, don’t we? Yet no one ever clearly defines Liberty. Freedom comes with responsibility; my daughter knew that in grade school. The ism of racism tells us of our power to target a particular group devaluing them and designating opportunity for liberty to another.
What if freedom is found in our humanity? Like we value the almighty dollar at all costs – (like our humanity), imagine if we realized our Freedom rests in our ability to Love? The fierce kind, the inclusive kind, the courageous kind. Human-ism, an action to counter all other isms, a power to target all humans as valuable designating opportunity to each.
This then can't be some trending phase of social consideration but a vital daily nutrient taken, tasted, chewed, swallowed, digested, metabolized, repeatedly, until we build strong bones and robust hearts. A training, bit by bit by bit, the slow drip into the veins of a society.
Take it slowly, but take it, like the medicine prescribed, until all the pills are gone, which of course, would be an endless supply. Just take a look in this small moment, in any way you have rejected anything, in you, outside of you. You know what I mean? The unkind thought about that neighbor. The way you disparage yourself for spilling the milk. Small moments to re-Member your Humanity and engage some Human-ism. Ah, "there, but for the direction of mind (heart), go I".
Just some rumblings of late
We each capable of steely eyed killing, acting out inhumanely, or enacting our humanism
https://youtu.be/WTDpS-SGTUk
Short talk and practice to remember humanity