Coming home from vacation on the plane, I watched two movies. "Hidden Figures" and "The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks". I cried, all the way through them. As a foreigner, I only come to understand Black culture and history through literature. I remember reading Langston Hughes in Spanish when I was a teenager, "
Not without laughter". I didn't know he was black until I went to College in California! His novel seemed to me so normal and close to my own experience when I read it, that I didn't notice the real story behind. But yes, I had also read "The Cabin of Uncle Tom" and cried, but that story felt like long gone history to me, in another strange world.
Now, the news hits us again. There is a picture of a small toddler with a white cone on her head in front of a police officer. There is pain. There is an unbearable pain in people's heart. We all know it's not just in this country. Every place, every people has its own pain history. I also have mine as a migrant, daughter, grand-daughter, and great grand-daughter and gggd of migrants. Even hundreds of years after, generation after generation we carry the pain. The suffering from this pain is now unbearable, and it's coming out violently, because people are hurt and broken. One only has to look at the faces of the Charlottesville aggressors arrested, they show deep emotional disturbance. They break others with their pain because that's all they have to give.
Why -one wonders- some people start hating each other?
At some point in their lives, they start believing "I am better, I am bigger, I am stronger, I am nicer, I am brighter, I am smarter, I am cleverer, I am more intelligent, I am slimmer, I am fatter, I am this or that more than you". Looking for identity, they can identify with a color, with a so called 'race', with a religion, with a country, with a nationality, with an ethnicity, with a culture, something they can represent and be. Why? Because we don't know to just BE (period). Then, they say, "mine is better, truer, stronger, nicer, smarter, cleverer, etc, or the only, or the best!". If you have been around children, you know that this is a toddlers' conversation: "my ... is better than yours". This is just human psychological evolution. The problem only comes when reality doesn't match what we are saying and we still have this need to BE SOMETHING, instead of just BEING.
So, in order to confirm the delusion, the person resorts to violence in fear (anger by now) of discredit. Then the other does not agree and also resorts to violence, etc.
I recently had the experience to share some time in a group with a person who was constantly stating how good, how smart, how clever, how beautiful, how skillful, how talented, how fit, how tall, how incredible, etc this person is. We were in front of quite a specimen! This person is in fact very talented, there was actually no need to boast about an obvious fact.
Why this person insisted in bragging about the qualities?
Is it to try to awake animosity? to make others feel inferior? to feel superior? Do the statements modify the reality? I don't know. Does it matter? In fact, there is no one person the same as another. We are all different. We have no chance to be the same. It's impossible. Another impossible is that in today's world we cannot keep an identity, of any kind. We are constantly changing, evolving at a pace we can't keep up with, because our identity is disintegrating with a purpose. Yes, our differences are important to help each other survive. Different cultures are different ways to find solutions to the problems we encounter. The more we contribute, the better are our chances to survive. In the end, deep down inside, we end up discovering that we are, in essence, all the same, a BEING. A being that experiences pain, sorrow, hunger, that needs love and fears not to receive it. We all have different and amazing talents that make us unique to serve each other, to help each other through this search of love, of wellbeing, and relief from suffering.
Why then, some people resort to violence?
Some people have suffered so much that they find themselves with no more emotional resources or endurance to find a way out by themselves. Often times, they don't even know, but they carry an ancestral suffering in their heart that they don't understand. In trying to answer this 'why', I think I understand, how oppression, rejection, social injustice, childhood traumas, conditioning, horrible environments they can't escape, lack of hope and ability. So many complex things happen in a person's life until one day, their heart burst into pieces. For some of us it's so hard to understand. I myself have been pondering this subject since I was a very young teenager. Even though some people are hard to bear, I was never able to hate anybody. I probably haven't suffered enough to get to that point.
One thing I know, and it is that only compassion can get us out of this hate tsunami. We probably won't be able to appease a terrorist, but we can appease hate, by helping the needy, we can be fair in our business deals, we can comfort the sorrowed, we can feed the hungry, we can be gentle with the angry, we can serve those that cannot help themselves, we can be kinder, we can be gentler in our relationships. And most of all, we can start making peace with our own selves. We don't need to be better that the other. We don't even need to be taller, brighter, smarter, cuter, thinner, bigger, beautifuller or supercalifragilisticexpialidociouser. Let us just BE (period). No more statements of judgement. And remember, whatever we choose to do has a domino effect. There is no small action, no small thought, no small person. The ripples we cause are infinite.
Another way to act instead of reacting is to open the dialog, to learn to listen,
to start conversations, to get to know that 'other' that seems so different. Our challenge is to approach others with an empty mind, no judgement, no pre conceptions, and listen to what they have to say, to develop a genuine interest in the other. People also can become violent when they feel isolated, when they feel they don't belong, they are not listened to, when they can't connect with others. I encourage to start the conversation with a comment below, tell us why you suffer maybe, your hopes, your dreams, your feelings about violence, fear, anger. Open up, connect. Are you old enough to remember when there were no electronic devices and we spoke to people? If you are too young for that, know that there was a time when people talked to each other, and face to face too!
;) Sending you much love...
