The Heroes We Are

I have a tendency to idealize people, especially leaders. Not government officials because their peccadillos are well documented, but other leaders like Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. However, everyone has their flaws. Gandhi was a racist and had some weird, perhaps even abusive, sexual behaviors. Dr. King cheated on his wife. Did both of these men contribute to society and deserve recognition for that? Absolutely. But were they perfect? No.

That’s quite common actually for revolutionaries. I’m going to quote Rutger Bregman from a super-long article in The Correspondent. He read a book by British journalist Helen Lewis called Difficult Women that chronicles the history of feminism in Great Britain. In the book she makes the point many revolutionaries are difficult. Progress tends to start with people who are obstinate, obnoxious, and deliberately rock the boat. Also, doing good work in the world doesn’t mean a person is perfect.

Bregman writes: “Lewis’s criticism is that many activists appear to ignore this complexity, and that makes them markedly less effective. Look at Twitter, which is rife with people who seem more interested in judging other tweeters. Yesterday’s hero is toppled tomorrow at the first awkward remark or stain of controversy.”

I know it's a little silly to use a Batman figurine to illustrate this post, but Batman is a human and he's a hero so. . . Photo by Ali Kokab on Unsplash

I’m reminded you don’t have to be perfect to make great change in the world and in fact, I take heart in that regular people with passion do that all the time. As we’ve recently celebrated Pride, I’d like to mention one such person: Marsha P. Johnson, a Black trans woman, who played a key role in the fight for LGBTQ equality. Three passionate Black women making a difference today are the co-founders of Black Lives Matter: Patrisse Khan-Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi.

You obviously don’t have to be a saint to be a leader, to be a spiritual revolutionary. My teacher says true leaders or spiritual revolutionaries work to achieve progressive changes for human elevation on a well-thought, pre-planned basis, whether in the physical, metaphysical, or spiritual sphere and they follow an ethical code. That ethical code includes things like not intentionally harming others, practicing benevolent truthfulness, not stealing, sacrificing to serve others, etc.

Today I am reminded that you and I can also be leaders in our own right, in our own way. If we are working to elevate humanity and doing our best to be ethical people, we fall into that category. We may never have the notoriety of any of the leaders I mention in this post, but we’re still leaders and the work we’re doing still matters. We need different people playing different roles to create change.

I’m going to end with another quote by Bregman here. He says:

“Our inclination – in talk shows and around dinner tables – is to choose our favorite kind of activism: We give Greta Thunberg a big thumbs up but fume at the road blockades staged by Extinction Rebellion. Or we admire the protesters of Occupy Wall Street but scorn the lobbyists who set out for Davos.

“That’s not how change works. All of these people have roles to play. Both the professor and the anarchist. The networker and the agitator. The provocateur and the peacemaker. The people who write in academic jargon and those who translate it for a wider audience. The people who lobby behind the scenes and those who are dragged away by the riot police.”

I dream of a world where we all work together to make a better society. A world where we recognize we all have the capacity to be leaders. A world where we remember we don’t have to be perfect to make a difference. A world where we see ourselves for the heroes we are.

Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.

Embracing our Humanness

(First off, I want to say even though I’m not writing about Black Lives Matter this week doesn’t mean I no longer care or it’s not on my mind. It is. Being a human being means I care about many things all at the same time. In addition to everything going on in the world, things still happen in my personal world, and that’s what I’m writing about today.)

On Saturday, I stuffed cream, cashmere gloves into my jacket pocket in preparation for my trip to the grocery store. I like to wear gloves when I know I’ll be encountering high-touch surfaces because it saves me from washing my hands. About six minutes in to my walk to the store, I noticed the gloves had escaped my pocket. I stopped in my tracks and did an about face, retracing my steps while scouring the sidewalk and the street for my gloves. I found one and kept looking. I walked all the way back home and didn’t find my other glove.

Because I still needed groceries, I turned around again and kept my eyes trained on the ground looking for my glove. Didn’t find it. After leaving the grocery store, I once more swept my eyes left to right, constantly looking for my other glove. If you’re keeping track, that’s three times I searched for my glove to no avail.

The glove in question.

When I came home, I took a picture of my glove and uploaded it to Google for a reverse image search, to see if I could purchase the gloves again. Nope. Then I messaged three different people on Etsy to ask if they could make me a match. If that wasn’t enough, later in the evening, just for kicks, I searched the street two more times and came up empty. If it wasn’t obvious, I have trouble letting go. Not only of objects, but also of people and situations. Goodbyes are hard for me.

I try really hard to fix things so I won’t need to feel sad. In this case, if I found my other glove I wouldn’t feel sad or upset because the problem would be solved. I think it’s safe to say my other glove is gone. Tears are pricking my eyes even typing that. I don’t want it to be true but reality is like that. In real life, not everything can be fixed or solved. Even buying a new pair of gloves won’t truly replace the one I lost. A new pair won’t make up for what’s missing. I’m allowed to feel sad about that.

My therapist tells me frequently emotions are like tools and when they show up, use them. When sadness shows up it’s because of a loss. I’ve lost many things in my life and I don’t think I’ve properly grieved them all. I was too busy metaphorically combing the street trying to solve the problem to cry. But here’s the thing about grief – it doesn’t go anywhere. It stays in the body. It may express itself as lung trouble, or pain in the back, or weight gain, or something else, but grief sticks around until it’s felt.

This isn’t a profound post or fiery one or philosophical one. It’s a human one. I’m a human being and when I lose something, I feel sad whether I let myself cry about it or not. What I’m learning is life is easier when I let myself grieve. How much time and trouble could I have saved on Saturday if I had given in to the emotion I felt instead of fighting it? I don’t regret looking for my glove, but now that I know it’s not coming back, it’s time to grieve. Not only for my glove, but for other things too.

I dream of a world where we let ourselves cry when we lose something or someone. A world where we recognize emotions are not meant to be fixed but rather felt. A world where we let ourselves feel our feelings when they come up. A world where we embrace our humanness.

Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.

Collective Power

While watching a movie that addressed publishing the Pentagon Papers, what struck me the most is multiple presidential administrations maintained U.S. involvement in Vietnam because they didn’t want other countries to lose respect for us. Setting aside how screwed up that is, I can’t think of a single country that still has respect for the U.S. OK, maybe Brazil, which also has a fascist leader, but otherwise the pickings are slim. These days Trump doesn’t seem to care one iota what other countries think of the U.S. and instead only cares about appealing to his base: primarily white, Christian men who are racist.

I want to address that term, racist. Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility, said, “We have to stop thinking about racism simply as someone who says the N-word.” Meaning it’s possible some Trump supporters (but not only his supporters) are racist but think they aren’t because they don’t use the N-word or they have friends who are people of color. Racism is a system that benefits white people – it’s prejudice plus power. And white people who want to maintain the status quo are supporting racism.

Trump does not fall into the camp of someone who is unaware he’s racist; he’s blatantly so. One only has to look most recently at his decision to hold the now-moved rally in Tulsa on Juneteenth as evidence of that. If you don’t know, Tulsa is the site of one of the worst incidents of racial violence in the nation's history. In 1921, hundreds of black people were attacked by a white mob that looted and burned many black-owned businesses and homes in the Greenwood District, a neighborhood that was then known as "Black Wall Street."

Power to the people. Photo by Alex Radelich on Unsplash

Trump’s racism is calculated and it’s precisely why he’s in power. Back in 2017, the Atlantic published an excellent essay by Ta-Nehisi Coates, an excerpt from his book We Were Eight Years in Power. Coates said, “In recent times, whiteness as an overt political tactic has been restrained by a kind of cordiality that held its overt invocation would scare off ‘moderate’ whites. This has proved to be only half true at best. Trump’s legacy will be exposing the patina of decency for what it is and revealing just how much a demagogue can get away with.”

Coates said Donald Trump is the first white president because he “moved racism from the euphemistic and plausibly deniable to the overt and freely claimed.”

It was true in 2017 and it’s still true now. How much can a racist demagogue get away with? Especially when he’s no longer pretending to be a decent man, to care about what other people or other countries think of him? The answer as we’ve seen is quite a lot.

A part of me wants to fast forward to 2021 when I sincerely hope Donald Trump is out of office, but the reality is, what Trump embodies doesn’t go away with a new president. He’s merely a symbol of what’s been here all along. It’s up to us to create a more just society and also to remind elected officials they work for us and not the other way around.

I’m heartened by the current protests because that dynamic is playing out. When the Minneapolis City Council unanimously passed a resolution to replace the police department with a community-led public safety system, it was a signal that public outrage can make a difference.

There is power in the collective, both good and bad. We can either use our collective power to maintain the status quo, to support inequality of all kinds, or we can do something different. We can band together to create a world we’d like to see. I, of course, want that better world.

I dream of a world where we use our collective power to remind the government they work for us. A world where we dismantle racism as well as all other -isms. A world where we win back the respect of other countries because we’re operating with respect. A world where power returns to the hands of the collective, where it belongs.

Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.

We are Made to be Different

I have only told this story to a handful of people but now seems like the right time to share it more broadly. A few weeks ago I wrote a post about being the kind of people we want others to be. I mentioned the peace prayer, which is often mistakenly called the St. Francis prayer. I linked to a couple of stories of ex-KKK members who changed their ways based on relationships with people they used to hate.

After I wrote the post, I started to question the value of what I do, of how I help others. Does it really make a difference that I write a blogpost every week? Am I changing anyone’s life in a deep and profound way by leading a group meditation on Sundays? Would I make more of an impact by befriending someone who is in the KKK and supporting their exit from the Klan?

Literally within a few hours of thinking those thoughts I was zoombombed by neo-Nazis at the group meditation I lead. They started scribbling swastikas over my screen. They asked how many Jews we’ve killed and did whatever they could to disrupt the meeting before my co-moderator and I ejected them. (Since then we’ve tightened security measures at the meeting to keep incidents like that from happening again.)

This picture will make more sense as you keep reading. Photo by Kael Bloom on Unsplash 

After I calmed down, I started to laugh. It was as if the universe said to me, “Really? Are you sure you want to befriend neo-Nazis? Are you sure the form of service you provide isn’t worthwhile?” The universe answered my question very quickly and validated for me, yes, this is what my gifts are, and yes, they are needed.

I bring this up because I’ve had conversations with several people – both white and black – who have lots of feelings about not being on the streets protesting the treatment of black and brown people. There’s a feeling they “should” be and maybe some guilt that they aren’t. I get it because I feel that way too. I want to support black, brown, and indigenous people. I want them to know I’m not OK with how they are treated and protesting is one way to demonstrate that. However, my nervous system cannot handle large crowds. I start to panic when I’m in large groups which is why I never attend concerts or sports games at large stadiums. Even going to a shopping mall wipes me out.

Yesterday I went to a small protest near my house but there is no way I can be in a throng of people. When I think about my zoombombing experience, I realize that’s OK. Everyone has different gifts and different abilities. We are all special in our own way and however we’re choosing to show up in the world is valid. A symphony orchestra requires numerous instruments to create beautiful music. Humanity is like that symphony – we can’t all be the cello.

In fact, my spiritual teacher says, “[D]iversity is the order of providence. One must remember that identicality is disowned by nature – nature will not support identicality … diversity is the law of nature and identicality can never be. But diversity is not the same as disparity. Disparity encourages exploitation based on differences, while diversity recognizes multiplicity which reflects underlying unity.”

I dream of a world where we recognize we’re not meant to all do the same thing. A world where we realize we are like the instruments of a symphony orchestra – each part is important, beautiful, and adds to the whole. A world where we cherish how we personally contribute to society. A world where we recognize we are made to be different.

Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.