Relative…

Today was overall not the best day. I was pretty well frustrated and it kind of marred a lot of the day for me. On top of me going back and forth with myself whether I had a right to be upset, which is ridiculous because our feelings are a direct response to what we are experiencing, I just spent a lot of my day in my head in a bad way. On the up side I did at least get to enjoy a sliver of this 70 degree day, which I am estimating will be probably the last day of the year that high in temperature. It is November and I am in the Chicagoland area. This extended warmth is an anomaly. Glad I could bask in the sun a bit.

But with everything in the news I have begun to realize two major things. One, we have been conditioned to take our government as a joke. It is a reality show at this point. There is nothing funny about any of this, but I understand people needing to find a way to laugh because most people don’t know what to do. Still, it is utterly ridiculous and yet it is our lives. It’s absurd. Albert Camus would be speechless.

But that brought me to another thought, which is how we think of history and time. We think of empires in the context of years and centuries. People think of the life span of an empire being approximately 400 years. However, I think a better way to think of it is in generations. Say the first generations caught the worst of it. They were colonized, murdered, brutalized, enslaved, and forced off of their lands. A few generations in, things calm down and start to get better. The new generations are taught to be grateful because they don’t have it as bad as their forbearers, never mind the same systems are effectively in place. They just put a couple of cushions over some of the harder parts and let a select few move up to show it’s possible while passing out band-aids and calling that freedom. However, more generations move the needle a bit further, only for them to realize that things are still not good and they’re the ones doing all the work and also most of the struggling. The things that have been socialized don’t work as time wears on. You promised the generations before something that you never actually delivered and there’s now enough history and stories available to acknowledge how bad it was and still is. That’s why the empire fades away over time. The more generations in, the harder it is to keep up. We know that things change, but don’t truly progress. It’s just bad in different ways now.

The point is that who knows what the next few generations will see. A lot of the worst of them seem to be getting old and dying. That’s why there’s a rush to try to get the young boys to red pill and young girls to start being wives and mothers again before they’re old enough to know they should have more choices. Time moves. Things change. It may take a good long while, but things will change. Like Dr. King said, we may not be alive to see us get there, but can you imagine being a major part of the push in that direction? Can you imagine being like Rosa Parks or A. Philip Randolph or Bayard Rustin or James Baldwin or Fannie Lou Hamer or Ida B. Wells? A part of history because you refused to accept the indignities of life under current systems. The more you question things, the more you realize that things cannot and will not be able to go on this way. Whether we allow the people to reshape into different forms with the same intent. Whether we look at ourselves as people who just like those we celebrate as heroes have the ability to make meaningful change in this world. These are choices put before us. However, they fall down the list of importance when you have bills to pay. We really shouldn’t want well paid revolutionaries. The people they’re working for don’t usually have money. 

I just want to note that, yes, things are absolutely insane right now. There are at least 5 major revolutions happening or that have just happened in Italy, Madagascar, Nepal, France, Brazil, and Tunisia. That’s not including what’s happening in Sudan, Tigray, and the Congo. Things in this world are absolutely changing. But we have to go to work. We have bills to pay. We just have to maybe have some awareness, but try to go on anyway. If not, people look at you like you’re crazy. Yet, this is our lives. It’s not going to wait for things to calm down.

I am grateful that I’m finally at the place to do what I love everyday, which is write. It took me of this time to really be able to appreciate it whether I get paid for it or not. The dream was to be a writer. I messed myself up needing that to matter to other people. But here we are, almost 2 weeks into posting everyday and I am really starting to feel it. I even uploaded a Substack today. I’m on a role. Until tomorrow…