But What Are You Scared Of?
Living will always be more powerful than erasure.
Almost everyone I know is depressed given the current state of the world. As the saying goes, “The USA sneezes and the whole world catches a cold.” But what happens when the USA has metastatic cancer? What happens to the whole world? What happens to you and me?
Each day, I hear something new, and I walk around in a stupor, shocked and confused. Then, I recalibrate. I vow not to get upset. Each evening, I tell myself to brace for tomorrow’s news, that it will be worse than today’s. And each day, I wake up shocked at the ever-expanding absurdity of news reports.
Certainly, this is neither healthy nor sane.
Honesty, I feel powerless in the face of the daily tsunami of systemic injustice, abuse of power, and degradation of democracy before our very eyes.
My heart hurts for people who do not look like me or share the same marginalization as I do. Now, my heart hurts for dead people.
Desecration
I am at the point of asking: "But what are you scared of?"
My history torments you?
Why?
You are uncomfortable with the truth that comes from a different skin color?
Why?
You are haunted by my gender?
Why?
You are incensed by our accomplishments?
Why?
You are afraid of my whole identity?
Why?
You are only comfortable with your perception of me as one-dimensional?
Why?
What is it you lack that this type of action comforts you?
What is it that you consider a diminishment of yourself?
What is it that you want to hoard for yourself?
Does the power that you hold, or think you hold, quake in your hands when you see someone like me walking in the distance?
In my death, you must exert your so-called power?
Is that really power if you are so easily threatened?
What is it that actually terrifies you?
Is it the mirror that is held up to you when you see the accomplishments of people you think are inferior to you?
Is it your own deficiencies that terrify you?
Is it your own mediocrity that haunts you?
Do you really believe that you are superior to anyone on the planet?
My friend, my brother, my sister, fellow child of God, remember,
We breathe the same oxygen that sustains both of us.
We will all go to ashes and dust when that breath finishes.
Your power will not matter.
You will disappear into the nothingness that is not life.
You will have nothing to hold on to at that last breath.
Nothing.
You will still be empty.
You will still be of nothingness.
You will be still.
The act of enlivening through writing and memorial is more powerful than erasure.
Living will always be more powerful than erasure.
Acts of erasure do not erase truth, living, heritage, and the Tikkun olam that a person renders in their lifetime.
What will be written and etched in eternity about your life?
Your lies?
Your attempt at erasure of others?
Your abuse of power?
Your despotism?
Truly, life is about the plentiful, the abundance of grace, mercy, and love.
So abundant, it cannot be measured.
There is plenty.
There is plenty.
Say it with me... There is plenty.
Just like one person cannot breathe all the oxygen in the world, there are….
Plenty of accolades to go around.
Plenty of accomplishments to be had.
Plenty of good to be done in the world.
Plenty of community to be shared.
Plenty of love to go around.
Plenty of compassion to enter into.
Plenty of suffering to counter.
Plenty of healing to deliver.
After all, is your life worth living if you have not rendered healing, beauty, grace, love, and gratitude to your fellow human beings?
Selah.
Masterfully written, Iyabo! The questions are appropriately penetrating. These folks are struggling with deep-seated inadequacies to go to a place so dark that they are attacking the deceased.
That list of questions. I felt it in my body. It made me want to post them all over that cemetery. If I lived there, I would. I think questions like these are the way forward. Thank you for this.