It's been a while since I've written in this blog but a lot has happened in our country and my life has been swept up in it. Today, though, I felt like writing again. As a believer and supporter of all faiths, I feel now more than ever we need a spiritual basis to calm and ground us. Our government on the fringe of turmoil, our political leaders (the few that are fighting for our rights) feeling as if they are powerless to stop the onslaught, leads the individual (a small, minuscule grain in the vast dust of the people) to feel confused. We want to be empowered and bring about a powerful change for the good of all in our country, and the world at large, and yet we have no idea how to do this. I will simply speak of my own feelings and thoughts below.
The 2016 election went underway and I tried, on election night, to stay up and watch as much as I could. Unfortunately, I had work the next day and so I left the live stream on YouTube running while I slept. I slept through the night but when they declared the winner to be Donald Trump, I groggily awoke and looked at the time. 3am. There is a part of me that doesn't believe in superstitions and then there's another part that always ends up formulating ties to explain an event that occurs. Whether, it's a car accident (I'll check the date and time it occurred to see if it'll occur again at the multiplication of that time years, months and days from the accident) or a president being elected at the hour of evil; 3am being the devil's hour. It's my brain trying to make sense of something outlandish that is going to prepare me for what will follow. The months after the election, through to inauguration I was letting events play out just as the majority of our country was. I too had agreed to give our new POTUS the benefit of doubt. Maybe he isn't evil incarnate. Maybe it's just my deep intuition going haywire. Maybe it's just a fear tactic that my brain is succumbing too. All of these maybes lasted for about a month into the inauguration and I saw, horrified, like the rest of our nation what a terrible leader the new guy had ended up being.
Looking at how he acted from tweet to tweet, from meeting to meeting and from executive order to executive order, there is just one positive thing that I saw from all of this. It spurred me to resist. To react and to mobilize in a political fashion that I have never done so in my entire life of being a resident of this country. I was heartened to know that I wasn't alone. The one positive about DT in office is that he brought all of us together as one unified force of the people against him. We are going to rallies (I still have yet to go to my first one and since the environment has always been the most precious thing to me, I will be making my stand at the Climate Change march in Staten Island, NY along with several others. If only there was a March for Science march on 4/22/17 near me, I'd go to that as well for I don't see science as being separate from religion.), signing petitions (every day I probably sign about 10-15 petitions and vote on countable (a mobile app) on bills that are going through Congress), check what our elected officials are doing and how they are voting, holding them accountable by going to town halls, speaking our minds to them and reminding them why they are in office. They are there for us and, more importantly, BECAUSE of us.
I'm one of the lucky few though because I live in a city where we are far more accepting of all people and diversity at it's core. Though, we are also struggling with racism, sexism and other forms of inequality as well, we are not giving in to them. We are not letting them dictate what is in the hearts of the majority of the residents here in NYC. We are standing together as a united community. Yet, I feel like I'm not doing enough. My family is telling me to distance myself from this. "Don't get involved" they said. "Politics is dirty. Stay out of it because it's not right for you" they go on to say. I know their reason behind this. It's solely to protect me against the harms society can inflict on those not ready to fight. My mom going as far as to say that getting involved in the community and reacting to everything that is going on in our government by resisting will only open me up to harm that others may cause me. Basically saying don't speak up, don't speak out because you'll invite the ire of those that are without remorse and they'll probably hurt or kill you. That is her fear for me, her child. How does one respond to that? How do I assure her that I have to stand up for my rights, her rights and the rights of others if I want to continue to enjoy the freedoms we all have when she has put that seed of fear in me. I begin to second guess my every action. Is what I'm saying to the new guy in his tweets going to invite the ire of the government against me? Or worse still, the ire of some of his supporters who are not afraid to take a life to further his agenda without remorse? Thoughts swirl, swirl, swirl in my head until they become a whirlpool of voices being all jumbled together moving ever faster and faster and with no end of stopping.
On a similar thought, I am now, after having lived here since I was 5 (we came to NY in 1983), for the first time more conscious of the color of my skin and how it stands apart from others. Every white person I see or come into contact with, I wonder about them. Are they friendly towards me? Do they have racist notions against me? Do they think I should go back to my country even though they would never have come here if it weren't for people of my origin? Would they listen to reason? Do I need to do more? Do I need to run for office so that I can show them what honesty and integrity really is like? Do I need to win their confidence so that we can bring the country back on the right track? Would I be able to even handle such a position, knowing the kind of personality that I have, and do good by those that would vote for me? Would they understand if I let them down and understand my reasons? If I were to run for office, where should I start? Should I start with local or state offices, or go straight for national? Why even run? I haven't been involved politically for years, I know very little of what it takes to make government run and even less than that about what's going on around us in other countries.
For decades, I've shunned and refused to watch or listen to news of any kind because I read in a sociology book that people who watch the news are far more prone to depression than those that do not. I've lived, for the better part of my life, a life of blissful ignorance. One of naivety. So, now what? Do I even have any right jumping into the middle of this unprepared for anything that comes after? So many questions and it feels like I know the answers. The answers are just there, hidden from view behind a veil that I need to slide open but as I get close to unveil the answers disappear and reappear further away until they become a fog. A fog that I am trying to wade through to contemplate and understand their meaning. The search continues. The quest continues. The purpose of my existence continues.
