How do we move on
when they work so hard
to keep us trapped
in the past?
I’m sure you know what’s happening as I type this. Sadly, this is not a unique moment in history. Not even a little bit. If there is a difference it’s that right now those of us who aren’t entirely indifferent or caught up in other things are all discussing it as it is happening.
And we are angry, we are outraged, we are fed up, we are saddened, we are overcome with disbelief.
We know this is wrong. We know it is always wrong. Yet it happened again.
Can nothing change? Are we doomed to forever repeat and relive a past we should have left in the history books a long time ago?
I don’t think so. This may not be the best time for it, but I am overcome with hope.
Still, that’s so easy for me to say, knowing I shall always be a TV or computer screen away.
I can hope because I have hope left and I have hope left because it’s been so easy for me to hold on to it. I have a vault filled with hope. I am a hope billionaire.
But I know you can’t change anything with hope alone. I do have to act. We all have to act. Our not acting is how we got here.
Again.
We have to act, knowing that there are many who are just as shocked and disgusted over what they see, but for a completely different reason. The ones who donated thousands of dollars to a man BECAUSE he shot a boy. These people love the past, even though they only really know it from other people’s memories and products of a Hollywood dream factory that created fantasies where the players couldn’t directly acknowledge even the most basic facts of life.
For them the past is a womb–a place to feel warm and safe. They want to go back to what they know and what they think they know, not a future where their path isn’t predetermined by the lottery of their birth. Right now is a moment for them to celebrate. To feel smug. To feign mock horror at the displays of anger they insist have no justification.
They are assholes. But assholes with power. They vote. They run for office. They game the system and find new ways to disenfranchise any who pose a threat. They know they can’t fight a fair fight, because they know they can’t win a fair fight.
So, we lose a lot and we lose hard. And it hurts. But we still have the advantage.
Because that’s the one great thing about the past. The more you study it, the more you realize that our victory is inevitable. It’s going to take a long time–far longer than our patience will bear–but each moment does leave a mark. And from that mark we move on forward–slowly, but inexorably. Each step feels like agony, but it gets us just that little bit closer nonetheless.
But, like I said, it’s so easy for me to say this, so I’ll leave the last words to someone else.
“Can nothing change?”
My 14 yo son is reading “A Lesson Before Dying” by Ernest J. Gaines in school….My son and I were shocked at some of the language and the rigid social and economic straitjackets worn by characters of both races in the deep South….In light of recent events, sometimes I think certain people wish that the clock could be turned back to a different time….
I feel really SAD for his family or any family that loses a child to violence. That said, don’t let them make you into a victum, VOTE. The Chief of Police and Prosecutor are elected positions, Vote Like Your Life Depended On It!