It’s been a long time, I shouldn’t have left you...
There are times, dear readers, when I am silent not because I have nothing to say, but because I have too much to say. Times when so much is happening in the world that I barely have time to process information, let alone write about it.
The spring of 2010 was one of those times- National People’s Action was taking on the banks, BP was dumping thousands of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, birds were falling out the sky, and fish appeared belly up without explanation. I was convinced that the world itself was coming to an end.
I clung to CNN like a lifeline, certain that without the dulcet concerned tones of Anderson Cooper’s reporting, I too would float away in an ever increasing sea of willful ignorance.
Hello, my name is Ajah Hales, and I am a current events junkie.
When history is being made I have been known to go for days without food or sleep. If left unchecked, I start to lose the ability to have prosaic, sociable conversation. I have occasionally snuck onto the Twittersphere for a quick fix during church.
My addiction is shameless, insatiable. She has no preferred medium- internet, television, radio, print- all are acceptable. She devours tender tidbits of information until my brain is gorged and I crash, drooling, on the closest soft surface.
With (grudgingly accepted) help from friends and relatives, I begin to re-acclimate to the real world. Like a rocket, I’m burning on re-entry. Every television show triggers a diatribe against capitalist excess, economic injustice, structural racism. I can’t enjoy a sandwich without wondering whether the lettuce came from China or Spain and how much oil it took to get it to my bun.
People ask me about sports or Kardashians and I am enraged, disappointed, then finally resigned.
And in that resignation comes a kind of peace. An understanding that self-sabotage is the greatest global commodity, and that by indulging my obsession I am another willing participant, that by sequestering myself I grow the divide between me and those I wish to influence.
There is a heavy dose of arrogance and a smattering of psychosis in trying to understand the world. Life, in all its profundity is too big for mere mortals, yet every so often I find myself living in what I have come to think of as ‘the times’- the times that people will talk about and study centuries from now, no doubt with incredulity.
These are the times by which history will condemn us, and I cannot help but try to comprehend them.
These are the times of chainless slavery, unspoken apartheid, selective bigotry, blatant xenophobia, intellect shaming, war mongering, resource raping, distract-distract-distract from what’s behind the curtain, and when our grandkids ask what the hell were we thinking, we will be forced to tell them honestly, we weren’t.
I refuse to accept that outcome. Two Fridays ago, I was blessed to see Angela Y. Davis at Case Western Reserve University’s Social Justice Institute 3rd Biennial Think Tank (Fo’ FREE!) and she said words that spoke to my soul.
“I am done with accepting the things I cannot change, and instead focusing on how to change the things I cannot accept.”
Two days before that Dan Price was on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah explaining how his values led him to giving up his million dollar salary so that all his employees could make a fair wage. Minimum wage at Gravity Payments is now $70,000 per year.
Yes, Lawd, Yaaaaaaaaasssssssssss!
I’m happy dancing in my pajamas because finally someone else is my kind of crazy. Oh, and he’s not hard to look at, either.
Then Angela Davis stares directly into my soul (or maybe my fro, I was pretty far in the back), and dares me to change the world.
“Being a radical,” she explains to an eleven year old girl, “is about trying to understand things at their root.”
So here I stand, trying desperately to understand the root of “that force of human nature that causes us to crave plunder” as Ta-Nehisi Coates so eloquently stated.
I don’t have all the answers, but I did come to a conclusion:
It is our indifference, more than our greed, which allows us to sustain systems of oppression home and abroad.
Those who are determined to plunder are dangerous, but few. It’s us, the indifferent, petty, easily distracted masses, that unwittingly offer our heads for the wool to be put over.
It is our own refusal to admit difficult truths, our determination to avoid conflict rather than resolve it, that keeps us in a hell of our own making.
I refuse to die a coward, and to live as one would be a death of the soul.
Hoarding current events instead of sharing them is an act of cowardice, one of which I am guilty, and for that, I apologize.
I may not have many readers yet, but for the people who do take the time to read what I have to say, I sincerely regret doing you such a disservice.
I thought that I should think things through on my own, process them, and then write about them. I was wrong. We should be processing together, learning together, interacting, discussing, disagreeing and problem solving together. The thing about bravery is, it’s a lot easier when you’re not going it alone.
I know I let you down, but I promise to make it up to you. I’ll never leave again. I won’t shy away from how I really feel, and I promise not to hold back the difficult truths. Fair warning:
The truth may set us free, but first it’s going to hurt like hell. But don’t worry. We’re in it together.
I may not be able to change the world, but if enough of us commit to changing our own little corner,
Yes, WE can.
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