Over the past month, I have been at odds with words. I have struggled to find the right things to say on many fronts; I have listened where I felt my own words would have no value, and endeavored to be thoughtful about the words I did use.
It is a complicated time for words, when some struggle to articulate themselves thoughtfully and others reach for any and every word to blanket those around them with their viewpoint. I have been consumed by this thought since yesterday when someone used the phrase “why should I have to see that?” This person did not think twice about unleashing every feeling they were having (all of them negative) and ending with how most of what is happening in world was an affront to them, as thought it were personal.
Two things happened following this statement: the first was that a long list of all the ways I ought to have responded ran through my head. After the person was gone from my presence, I was overwhelmed by my own muteness, and could see clearly in the aftermath all of the ways in which it was my responsibility to ask this person why they should NOT have to see what is happening in the world? Why should violence and love in all forms and history and language and government not be their responsibility to bear? Why must they never encounter things they do not like or approve of? As someone who has been sober nearly a year I don’t expect alcohol to simply stop existing or for everyone in my life to also give up drinking. I also don’t like oysters but I don’t take issue with restaurants who serve them, as though their name on a menu is deeply offensive to me and my tastes. The audacity of anyone who thinks the mere existence of other people, thoughts, ideas, beliefs, or ways of life is somehow a crime against them demonstrates an abhorrent self-centered attitude.
The second thing that happened was that I paused in my disappointment with myself and anger toward this person and thought: am I perceived in this way? Do my own frustrations make me the kind of person who can only see the world from my point of view? Am I making my world, the universe in which I exist, smaller every day by giving others the impression I am intolerant and likely to lash out at any moment? Have the things in life we have been taught to normalize - unhealthy relationships, jobs we don’t understand, disconnect from our own economic realities - led me to become a woman who speaks irrationally, violently, and without thought for my place in a larger universe, one that impacts everyone?
If the answer is “yes”, I must do everything in my power to work toward making it “no. “ And if it is already “no”, then I will work toward helping others to ask the questions of themselves. “Why should I have to see that?” Because it is a reflection of yourself, and we must not walk the earth unknowing of who we truly are.