Reconcile our history face our present
The ocean temperature is set to summer, even though in the Southern Hemisphere, we are well into autumn. Today, the weather is wet, wild, and still too warm.
The last few days were another round of supporting my partner through surgery. This time for a postponed genetic issue called Dyputrens Contracture, a mostly male gene that comes from the Vikings and affects the tendons in the hands.
Having made it well through open heart surgery last year, this time felt like a breezy walk in the park, but my biology had a different story to tell. Yesterday, the day after surgery, I, the support person, felt like someone had vacuumed my energy reserves.
Supporting and caring requires a different type of fitness. I honour those who do this full-time.
I am reading a book called The Incarcerations, by Alpa Shar. Through the story of the incarceration of 16 human rights defenders in India, charged with being Maoist terrorists, the book exposes the terrible seizure of power by the Modi government and the desire for the Indian version of eugenics, where only the elite Hindus have rights.
My mind is tangled with understanding our history of colonisation, while watching the exact same source code of colonisation being played out everywhere, in every continent, including my own. What we have done and continue to do to our indigenous people must be acknowledged and healed. Yet the pattern of behaviour continues, with discrimination against anyone but the elite.
Power capture subjugating the poor, middle class and any version of others.
While we must reconcile our history, we must also face the present. It is racism. And poverty. And the uneducated. White trash is as denigrated as anyone. This was the thesis of the book Caste By Isabel Wilkerson.
My partner shows me a video of a mother whale and her new calf. The love and affection shared between these two mammals soften my heart. I feel tears.
In my bones, I know that most of us animals want the same. To be loved. To love. To matter. To be given dignity simply for our existence.
While the scale is different — I cannot know what it feels like to be black in a white world, for example — there is a pattern that many of us have experienced. Diminishment, marginalisation, discrimination, cruelty. From the skinny, awkward kid in the playground to the stutterer to the fierce girl who would not apologise for being smart, some elements of some humans want us to be reduced to no thing. Our working world demands this. Human Resources. Numbers on a spreadsheet. A cost centre.
This same element of humans wants to kill the mother whale and her calf and cut down all the trees. To profit and gain more power. To become the care less elite.
Having spent a life talking to some of the care less elite, most of them have a big empty space inside. The spoils of their rapacious greed turn them into hungry ghosts.
In my tumble of contemplations on this very wet Sunday morning, it is towards love, beauty, hope, dignity, all-respect, belonging — central desires of life — that I turn.
Mother Theresa and Gandhi spent their lives extending love, care and all-respect to everyone. I admire them for that. It is hard to look into the eyes of someone who seeks to eradicate your existence for not being a replica of them, and hold the ground of love.
Yet this is the work. Change how we show up, change how we act in the world, and change the ecology of our culture through language and the systems and structure where the sacredness of all life is central.
Photo Taken January 12th 2024
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