After your first year of medical school you have the last summer vacation of your life. And so I decided to make the most of it. Part of my summer was spent in Taiwan, living with my grandmother, working on my chinese, doing some light shadowing, and, of course, reading. A chance to catch up on the reading that you always say you'll do when you have more time: War and Peace, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and Sister Outsider. And time to reflect. lots of time to reflect.
It felt really good to be engaging in thoughts on social justice again. On an intellectual level (not a "yo, lemme tell you about the messed up thing that happened and how it reflects an unfair system" level). It was like a wave of revitalization traveling through my body. For the most part Sister Outsider wasn't mind-blowing. Not because Audre Lorde isn't fantastic (and far smarter and wiser than I) or because I don't agree with her, but because for the most part I felt like I had seen many of the ideas that she spoke on. It wasn't life altering, but it definitely was reaffirming. Like the difference between hearing a new song that makes your eyes pop open and replaying an old jam and grooving out. You appreciate it, enjoy it, and pick up some new nuances, but your heart doesn't pound.
And then... and then... she says, "Militancy no longer means guns at high noon, if it ever did. It means actively working for change, sometimes in the absence of any surety that change is coming... It means fighting despair." whoa. And suddenly my life snapped into focus. The past year seemed to whirl through my head and I realized why I was so tired all the time. So deflated. I had lost the feeling that what I was doing could possibly make a difference. And her statement rang through my thoughts again, "courage is actively working for change, sometimes in the absence of any surety that change is coming."
And then... and then... she says, "Militancy no longer means guns at high noon, if it ever did. It means actively working for change, sometimes in the absence of any surety that change is coming... It means fighting despair." whoa. And suddenly my life snapped into focus. The past year seemed to whirl through my head and I realized why I was so tired all the time. So deflated. I had lost the feeling that what I was doing could possibly make a difference. And her statement rang through my thoughts again, "courage is actively working for change, sometimes in the absence of any surety that change is coming."
And I realized that I had been living the past year of my life scared. And that I hadn't really been the same person that I used to identify as: strong and unintimidated.
As many times as it's happened, it's still hard to realize that you haven't been living up to your own expectations - that I will continue to disappoint myself. I had been scared: scared of the new relationship I was in because I was scared of being hurt again after such a jarring break-up last fall; scared to take on big projects because I might fail; scared that I wasn't actually the radical, edgey activist that I used to identify as.
I had just been going through the motions. I thought of all the activist groups that I had been a part of in the past year and how I had behaved: forward enough to seem like a leader, but never really taking any big risks either. And more than that, always with the ultimate attitude that anything we did probably wouldn't matter anyway. I was going through the motions just enough so that I wouldn't have to admit to myself that I had changed; that I had given up.
But suddenly I felt empowered. Suddenly recognizing it meant that I was free to address it. I was tired of being scared; tired of always feeling insecure in a fantastic relationship because of past baggage; tired of being angry with no hope; and tired from working on projects that were ultimately unfulfilling because they were never inspiring in the first place. And I could change all that.
As many times as it's happened, it's still hard to realize that you haven't been living up to your own expectations - that I will continue to disappoint myself. I had been scared: scared of the new relationship I was in because I was scared of being hurt again after such a jarring break-up last fall; scared to take on big projects because I might fail; scared that I wasn't actually the radical, edgey activist that I used to identify as.
I had just been going through the motions. I thought of all the activist groups that I had been a part of in the past year and how I had behaved: forward enough to seem like a leader, but never really taking any big risks either. And more than that, always with the ultimate attitude that anything we did probably wouldn't matter anyway. I was going through the motions just enough so that I wouldn't have to admit to myself that I had changed; that I had given up.
But suddenly I felt empowered. Suddenly recognizing it meant that I was free to address it. I was tired of being scared; tired of always feeling insecure in a fantastic relationship because of past baggage; tired of being angry with no hope; and tired from working on projects that were ultimately unfulfilling because they were never inspiring in the first place. And I could change all that.
And so I started a reading group. I wanted to target folks who had heard of the concept of privilege but had never really been given a framework or the space to really explore these topics. Consider it Privilege 101. But it's for a selfish reason. I'd like to heal. I need to force myself to see the goodness in white folks again. I need to feel engaged. I need a project that I feel has some teeth in it. I need to believe that change can happen again, even if it's only on an individual level. I'd like to be in a place where I can be loving and compassionate again.
