My goal this year, is to write once per week. Last week is done and I haven't written a thing. I'm asking myself why that is.
Typically, I'll read or hear something during the course of the week that will set my mind racing along some path. Eventually, the words and thoughts will cohere and I'll have a piece. That hasn't happened this week. But why? Snowpocalyse 2016. Job interview. Research. In other words, life.
It occurs to me that there are people for whom life sucks up all the space and they never come up for air. They are so overwhelmed by their own life stories, that they never manage to see or experience others' lives or pain; they never connect with what else is going on in the world; they never become aware that there is a world beyond their own nor do they realize that their neighbors' issues are connected to them in any way. There's a lot of that about. I was waist deep in it myself this past week. It happened so quickly, so easily, it's a little frightening.
I have never been that person, the person who really couldn't be bothered with what was going on in the world, or who could easily disengage from it. I like knowing what's going on. I like thinking about what's happening and thinking about how it affects us all. but look at how easily an entire week went by and I had no idea what ailed the world or excited it.
This will happen again, I'm sure, but I'm writing about not writing to remind myself that there's a world outside my Snowpocalyptic universe and that in it, awful & great stuff happens. Among the 'awful stuff' that happened, a woman by the name of Janese Talton Jackson was killed for rebuffing a man's advances. Also this week, while I was sleeping, children in Michigan were being exposed to toxic water and dangerous schools.
Even as we were appalled at the level of malfeasance and/or incompetence involved in the water situation in Flint, there was another Michigan story unfolding in Detroit that of the schools. The same Darnell Earley who so successfully handled the water in Flint while Emergency Manager for the city, was later appointed as Emergency Manager for the Detroit Public Schools. Two tasks, two fails. Where's this guy's pink slip or his orange jumpsuit, one or the other is urgently needed?
I am all horrored out. I have no horror this week. All I have is awareness of my unawareness. All I have is the knowledge of how easy it is to slip into a state of ignorance.
My guess is that there are those of us who are so taken up in our own worlds that we have no room, no thought, no head space to spare for consideration of others' woes. All we see or know, is our own fate. We have no time for the lady down the street; the people in New Jersey dealing with flooding or the people in California fearful about the escape of three dangerous criminals or those living in another Cali community that seems to be on the verge of tumbling into the sea.
I slept through last week and as a result, the horrors that have gone on around me, have been largely unremarked by me. That's a dangerous world to live in. Too much time spent sleeping makes us (morally) sluggish and (intellectually) lazy. Too much time spent navel-gazing leaves us far too concerned about the dangers of navel lint and blithely ignorant of the dangers of lead in our neighbors' drinking water or black mold in our neighbors' childrens' classrooms.
I slept through last week and awoke with a jolt aware that something important had occurred and I hadn't noticed. I slept through last week, but I won't sleep through another one because awareness is key, to everything. As the Black folk say, I gotta "stay 'woke"; awake; aware; engaged in more than just my navel gazing.
Stay 'woke! My new motto. Stay 'woke because there are things happening everywhere, every day and without the eyes and ears of a 'woke populace, we will all find ourselves on the verge of tumbling into the sea. Stay 'woke. I'm up. Are you?
Typically, I'll read or hear something during the course of the week that will set my mind racing along some path. Eventually, the words and thoughts will cohere and I'll have a piece. That hasn't happened this week. But why? Snowpocalyse 2016. Job interview. Research. In other words, life.
It occurs to me that there are people for whom life sucks up all the space and they never come up for air. They are so overwhelmed by their own life stories, that they never manage to see or experience others' lives or pain; they never connect with what else is going on in the world; they never become aware that there is a world beyond their own nor do they realize that their neighbors' issues are connected to them in any way. There's a lot of that about. I was waist deep in it myself this past week. It happened so quickly, so easily, it's a little frightening.
I have never been that person, the person who really couldn't be bothered with what was going on in the world, or who could easily disengage from it. I like knowing what's going on. I like thinking about what's happening and thinking about how it affects us all. but look at how easily an entire week went by and I had no idea what ailed the world or excited it.
This will happen again, I'm sure, but I'm writing about not writing to remind myself that there's a world outside my Snowpocalyptic universe and that in it, awful & great stuff happens. Among the 'awful stuff' that happened, a woman by the name of Janese Talton Jackson was killed for rebuffing a man's advances. Also this week, while I was sleeping, children in Michigan were being exposed to toxic water and dangerous schools.
Even as we were appalled at the level of malfeasance and/or incompetence involved in the water situation in Flint, there was another Michigan story unfolding in Detroit that of the schools. The same Darnell Earley who so successfully handled the water in Flint while Emergency Manager for the city, was later appointed as Emergency Manager for the Detroit Public Schools. Two tasks, two fails. Where's this guy's pink slip or his orange jumpsuit, one or the other is urgently needed?
I am all horrored out. I have no horror this week. All I have is awareness of my unawareness. All I have is the knowledge of how easy it is to slip into a state of ignorance.
My guess is that there are those of us who are so taken up in our own worlds that we have no room, no thought, no head space to spare for consideration of others' woes. All we see or know, is our own fate. We have no time for the lady down the street; the people in New Jersey dealing with flooding or the people in California fearful about the escape of three dangerous criminals or those living in another Cali community that seems to be on the verge of tumbling into the sea.
I slept through last week and as a result, the horrors that have gone on around me, have been largely unremarked by me. That's a dangerous world to live in. Too much time spent sleeping makes us (morally) sluggish and (intellectually) lazy. Too much time spent navel-gazing leaves us far too concerned about the dangers of navel lint and blithely ignorant of the dangers of lead in our neighbors' drinking water or black mold in our neighbors' childrens' classrooms.
I slept through last week and awoke with a jolt aware that something important had occurred and I hadn't noticed. I slept through last week, but I won't sleep through another one because awareness is key, to everything. As the Black folk say, I gotta "stay 'woke"; awake; aware; engaged in more than just my navel gazing.
Stay 'woke! My new motto. Stay 'woke because there are things happening everywhere, every day and without the eyes and ears of a 'woke populace, we will all find ourselves on the verge of tumbling into the sea. Stay 'woke. I'm up. Are you?
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