2020 Unscripted...

Wow… where to begin!!? 
When I created this website, it was never meant to be a forum for the political, for the nitty gritty side of life.  There are enough of those spaces.  This site was created so I could express myself.  It is for me.  It is for anyone interested in knowing what is going on in my head (brave souls that you are 😊)  

That being said… 
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Summer is starting to wind down.  The nighttime temps are slowly decreasing.   It is a never-ending cycle of change.  As is life. Particularly since early March. Life has been a chaotic, eye opening, heart breaking, mind numbing series of events.  I have learned about the darkness in so many people.  I found corners of my own mind that...

...are not as brightly lit as I thought them to be.  I have seen hatred boil over and spill out of people with such an intensity that it hurts my soul. I weep for those we have lost and those yet to be lost.  I’ve listened to people minimize what is happening during this Pan-Trump-BLM-demic.  I had a young man tell me that 100,000 lives lost really was not that much.  As I write this, that number is over 169,000.  I wonder at what point will he think we crossed over from “really not that much” to “whoa…that’s too much”. He was speaking in percentages. I do not. Personally… 1 life lost is too much, especially when the prevention is simple.  

I see political & civil unrest. One day I read that the sky is blue… the next day that statement is reassigned to someone else, denied or contradicted and I should now actually believe that the sky is green.   (tune in tomorrow to see what the color it will be). I’ve been shown that my skin tone strikes fear in the hearts and minds of some not like me. I’ve learned of attempts to obliterate my racial history and in some cases my race itself.
 
I do not know how to live in that space 24/7. It is confusing, painful and drives me towards insanity. You may think that I have gone down a darker path.  I assure you, I have not. Perhaps I just see that path as a reminder that change is the only constant. I see it as a guide of how NOT to be.  The preceding paragraphs describe only one side of the changes I’ve seen. 
  
One would not immediately think that good things come out of quarantine. Yet I have seen the following…companies across the world learned how quickly their workforce could be relocated to their homes and still be productive. Families relearned what it meant to be a family when they looked up and realized everyone was at the dinner table.  Some of them even learned to cook!  I have also seen beauty, strength and courage.  I have witnessed what happens to nature when humans are removed from the equation of being outdoors.  The quarantine gave Mother Nature time to heal…if only for a short time. The grass grew greener and more robust.  The pollution in the air decreased and the skies were blue again (or was it green??).  I’ve learned more about who I am and where I fit in.  All around me people are waking up to the possibilities.   

I have personally had people show courage by reaching out to me asking for clarity with the hope of gaining better insight about BLM and all that it embodies.  It is not an easy conversation nor is it a solution, it is a beginning, and to find solutions we must begin to communicate.  Healing our world is like starting a fire… you begin with kindling; you add a few sparks and you start to get a little flame here and there.  Those flames combine and before you know it you have a roaring fire! 
 
Please don’t think me so naive as to believe that the political & racial issues we face will all be resolved by the end of the year or even the end of the decade.  Those issues are so intertwined that sometimes it is hard to tell the difference. This kindling takes a long time to catch and the logs are slow to burn. Sometimes someone kicks dirt on the fire and then it rains. We didn’t wind up here overnight and we won’t fix it overnight. Change can be slow, uncomfortable, painful and sometimes violent, but it is always constant.  There is so much work to be done by people on all sides of this equation.  
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This is just the beginning.  The implementation of a solution will be generational.  I have watched people open their minds and begin to listen, open their hearts and begin to care.  People all over are standing up to aid, defend and protect those that they see as victims of injustice. I ask the universe to allow these conversations and actions to continue to take place and that the fire continues to catch rather than fizzle out after the proverbial 15 minutes of fame has expired. I implore that we each look inside first.  May we find the courage to acknowledge what needs to change within. Only then can we expect to deliver positive changes for all.