TRYING OUTSIDE THE LINES

One thing I’ll always be grateful to my parents for is instilling in me a love of reading. There was always a newspaper on the kitchen table. Daddy delivered papers overnight, and would always bring one home in the morning. It was usually just the daily local, but sometimes it would be something unique, like WSJ, NYT or FT. For me, breakfast was usually the time for comics (so much better than the same cereal box over and over), and I’d explore the rest of the paper when I had some time, waiting for dinner to finish cooking after homework, or just for a change of reading material. Ma kept up with the news and sports; I’d catch Daddy with the business section, and maybe the editorials.

Also have to say, now that I think about it, that those current events journals my sixth grade social studies teacher had us keep turned out to be a good thing. All we had to do was write down a headline for every day of the week and turn the lists in. But it had us paying a bit more attention to the world around us, learning about shared humanity and injustice. It was a hassle to me then, but I have to say that on this side I’m grateful to those teachers who reminded me the world is much, much larger than what happens in my little sphere.

I do remember in college, in editorial class, Dr. Weckman asked us to do the same thing, to bring in a current event each week. I remember one specific current event I shared during that semester – the conclusion of a murder trial in my hometown. High profile, not the outcome a lot of people wanted, difficult crime to understand. But I did understand that those kinds of things happen, bad actions don’t make bad apples, sometimes people are ill, and not everyone is that way, there’s still hope in the world.

Usually when my partner and I are out and about and I say, “Do you ever worry for the future of humanity?” or shake my head and mutter, “My people perish,” it’s from astonishment at everyday shenanigans. People driving crazily in the neighborhood, or showing up in attire absolutely inappropriate to the occasion; reading through the local news dumbfounded that that happened yet again, or watching a group brazenly attempt to steal a catalytic converter from a Prius in the Starbucks parking lot at 10:30 a.m. Usually has become used to be. Because shenanigans today are nothing like the pre-2020 Prius-Starbucks incident. It seems people in all places are actually out to hurt each other now, no matter the cost.

From localized incidents across America to international headlines, more than once a day, I whisper, “God, help your people.” Wars are raging, people are dying, children are starving. Criminals who may have been justified in their original rebellion are banding together and seizing more land and power and control, killing indiscriminately, maybe even some of those they initially set out to stand up for. And the remaining opposition forces have grown stronger, bolder, and in response those fighting to maintain order more easily justify less than traditional warfare practices against them. Some days it seems like we’re living in a hellscape simulation; other days it’s like we’re all on the receiving end of a huge joke, just waiting for the reality of the punchline to hit. I read posts, hear echoes of “Join the resistance, be the resistance, we can work together for change…” To that, I ask, “Me? Can the tiny bit that I can do really make a difference?”

I wonder how our ancestors did it. How they found the strength and long-suffering to persist in the fight for meaningful life. We’re each here because a long time ago, someone made a decision that we in the here and now should not have to live with the difficulties they in the there and then lived with; someone believed we deserved and saw that we had better. Basic freedom, literacy, voting, education, owning property, integration, marriage of choice—if you are alive and live well today, someone paved the way for you, no matter your citizenship, class, or color.

We all come from a lineage of warriors who refused to give up. Despite illness, isolation, incarceration—the threat of these and everything worse, including dishonor, disassociation, and death, were not able to deter them from their pursuit of justice. How many of them knew they wouldn’t see it in their lifetime? How many of them stood and sat in and marched and met in secret and started committees and planned movements for me? For you? We carry our ancestors’ blood, their power and passion flows through our veins; how many warriors are hidden among us, how many willing to rise to call of the times?

Zora Neale Hurston said, “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.” Auntie Zora, I will do my best to stand and speak and not grow weary, but please show me grace if all I can muster is a whispered prayer.