Category: Encountering New Experiences

I use to think I had a little wisdom. Now I know I have less than a little. It seems I have reached this fork in the road on the brink of a new month, October. I wonder if this is somehow significant? I have prayed for increased wisdom and the answer Seemingly is that I have a ways to go. Okay then, glad I learned this before I tried to use my non-existent wisdom.

It’s so easy I now realize to make grand claims of what you would, have done, could have done, are doing and will do – especially the claim of will do. I am sure that as children we all had grand dreams, but as adults they have faded into dust. We have a vision of how we want to be seen now and what we want others to say about us later. However, making that a reality takes so mush effort and time! We may have had to reevaluate our dreams and aspirations and the date by which we have to accomplish them but if we stick with our vision, it will all happen. Nothing comes to you when you want it to. To realize any dream you have, no matter how practical and “attainable”, takes great effort and yes sacrifice. In the middle of trying to put together your portfolio, you realize that you have to dump the folder and start all over! Arrg!

You may decide to begin in the square you just came out of, or you may decide to work outside preexisting boundaries. In this drive to eke out something meaningful, you may have to put aside prior beliefs and friends. To shut the door on tempting offers and deny yourself what you always thought you wanted. Essentially the plan Bs and Cs may have to be converted into a, “let’s see where the wind blows”, kind of non-plan. We may have to sprout vague philosophies to make others think they can make sense of our bluffs and evasions about when that plan will finally manifest.

Seriously, doing something you find meaningful can be very tedious and frightening, especially when you cannot see the end result. All you can do is continue to work hard, yield when you must and advance at the right time. The process may be messy but the results can be so sublime – or so I have been led to believe!

I think I have mentioned before that U am working on my research paper for my masters program. SO, today I met with my supervisor concerning a paragraph she had asked me to write as I narrow my area of focus. Let me just say that I am not yet seeing the light nor the tunnel. Therefore, I am stumbling through the dark trying to make sense of where I am in this journey to completing this program.

However, I took a very important lesson from our discussion today. I learned that we have been programmed – yes programmed to have a very narrow view of ourselves, but especially of other. I also learned that such programming once successfully implemented, is difficult to shift. Imagine my disappointment with myself to realize how easy it is to perpetuate the injustice of stereotyping an entire group of people because I focused on a single thread of their stories. Despite the fact that we have become “a global village”, it is so difficult to get the big picture of anyone let alone an entire group of people. We begin to think that one bad incident means that an entire people are doomed and that the actions of a few correlate as the consensus of the majority.

The funny yet not so funny reality is that often times we create a picture of others based on the most sensational piece of information that we can gather, or are given. Hence, we reduce the experiences of others to what gets the biggest reaction. Many of us have become slaves to the nine day wonder syndrome where the most outrageous, no matter how inaccurate, is what gets the most attention. Though I believe it is important to be fair in how we represent and speak on issues as outsiders looking into to the lives of others, it seems, if we are not careful, we end up ignoring the real for the imagined. We may end up ignoring the humanity of peoples who have been demonized and dispossessed. What is even worse is that we may end taking away their humanity in an effort to prove how much they have suffered, reducing them to a product that affirms our humanness, our triumphs.

So like me, let us take some time to do some self-reflection before we jump in head first in representing a group that we do not belong -although we should do so for even those whose stories we think we know. It is so easy to, misquote, misrepresent and misunderstand others. Let us take the time to take a second third and even fourth look, before we claim authorship of another person’s narrative.

“Just ask, don’t presume the worst of people”

Sonia Sotomayor

I think we have all been guilty of this. We have all been guilty of making some pretty wild assumptions about people we know nothing about. Nothing what so ever. Trust me right now people are doing the same to each and everyone of us. People you know and don’t, everyday make up fantastic assumptions about you. Sometimes we feel well within our rights to presume and judge. Before they have had time to mount a defense – because they didn’t know they had to – we find them guilty. We find them guilty of things that, if we had taken a moment to think about it, we would find wildly unrealistic to assume.

The idea that we spend a lot of our precious time making realities for others, should stop us in our tracks. Because the time we take to make up these stories, could have been spent getting to know the person more, so we could treat them from a place of knowing and not based on a bunch of assumptions. When it happens to us we know how unfair it is. But when we do it to others, we develop temporary amnesia. We choose to ignore how dangerous it is to make too many assumptions and then live our lives as if they were true. We do not think about the fact that people are the way they are because each of us a back story; each part of the journey is important in the lives of each traveler and while we may have left certain things behind, those experiences never fully leave us.

We may only see the result and not the cause. The healing taking place in someone’s life may not be happening in the way we think it should. But the greatest thing is that there is the possibility for beauty in every ugly narrative. We are not better because someone’s weak point is when we are at our best, because while overcoming the worst experience of our lives, someone is at the same time living their nightmares. When we assume, it means that the- reasons -why no longer matter. It means that we are not willing to take the time to listen, to understand that today that person looked mean because their world is falling apart and they had to carry that burden in silence, so as not to offend the “sensibilities” of those around them.

So if it means so much to have that story, don’t assume, just ask.

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”

― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

The truth you tell is not always the truth that is believed and what is real and standing in front of others, is not always what they choose to take. Everyone’s truth is different because everyone’s story ain’t the same. There are opinions that many hold as fact, like who is the best and what is the greatest. Somehow from standing in a certain position we have decided what the truth should be; so today there is alternate truths, that confuse us and make us question what is real. We spend so much time trying to get to the source in order to arrive at the truth of a matter that we may never know the truth.

The truth is, there is no one truth. Everyone has a unique idea of what is real and what is not. For a lot of people truth about a belief or person can be the difference between life and death. The truth is always tainted because it’s open to corruption, add-ons and misinterpretations. Many of us live great fictitious lives, which are enabled to succeed today because of social media. We can be the most popular and most beautiful, because we present a version of reality that people consume. There are keyboard warriors who are the baddest and the loudest, the most witty and controversial because they are anonymous; no one really knows who they are, just the person they have created. We wear masks in all areas of our lives and we become what we think or know others want to deal with and that becomes the “true” self for many.

“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”

― Mark Twain

There are also those who are constantly sitting at the edge of their seats waiting for the other shoe to fall. They are the ones who have built their lives on lies. Those who have distorted the image of themselves and deceived others to get a seat at the table. The path to such a fate based on secret shames and assumed shortcomings, usually leads nowhere but public and private shame. It’s hard to keep up with a lie! The fear of discovery is a fear that destroys mentally and physically and not the act itself.

Then there are those who live the truth that is real for them. For these persons the truth is what they make and not what they are told it is; it’s not empirical (that’s boring, based on facts), but convenient. They need to convince themselves or others so they draw the card of, “look at what I say is true now, don’t think about the past or look ahead, if I repeat it enough it will become fact”.

When you speak truth, what type of truth are you speaking? I speak the truth that is relevant to my reality and not based on what I want it to be. Whatever you truth may be, remember that it can lead to feelings of betrayal and accusations of deceit, if you lie to yourself. However, if you embrace all of you and begin by being honest with yourself, then the truth that is your truth will take you to where you need to be.

You only are free when you realize you belong no place — you belong every place — no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great.

Maya Angelou

Today is yet another Monday and while I slave over my thesis that gets harder each day, I had a very profound thought. We spend so much time trying to measure up and be who we think people want us to be that we forget to simply be. To be the person we are intended to be. Sometimes it is the case that we have buried that person so far in the recesses of our minds that we do not know that spirit and soul. All we operate with is the shell of a body that others try to fill with their expectations. At the end of it all we really having nothing to give but a poor copy of what others try to make of us. The world tells you to be yourself, but when you do they pick that being a part until there is nothing left. They deceive and tell you that they celebrate difference but then try to silence you when you are out of tune. The world is one giant hypocrite. But we still have to live in it with people who tend to break your spirit, intentionally and unintentionally. Are we then trapped in the identity we assume. The possibility of change an illusion that means the jokes on us. Is the quotation true: Being a slave to an identity is no different from being a slave to a human master…

Being free may mean not fitting in but can we be okay with that? Many of us want to belong and be a part of something anything, as long as we are moving with the tide. But in order to do this do we have to place ourselves in a box and stay there? If this is the case then I would rather not. I would rather not fit in and be a part of any one thing but everything that I feel compelled to experience. I would rather not be the rule but only the exception. I would rather not lead anyone but myself to where I need to be. It’s really true that the only thing you can ever control is you. You can control your narrative, your image, your state of mind and so much more that has to do with you. You have been entrusted with you, and how you show up each day, in this world will determine whether you are free or not. Many of us struggle with being free and never will reach that state. We have become too programmed to operate on the premise of what’s popular, what your friends think, what is right in the eyes of society; we cannot see beyond the cage we have allowed ourselves to be confined in. Though they spoke to her lived experience, I think persons everywhere can recognize the wisdom of these words left by Maya Angelou:

Being free is being able to accept people for what they are, and not try to understand all they are or be what they are. … I think one of the most dangerous statements made in the United States, or descriptive phrases, is that it’s a melting pot. And look at the goo it’s produced

Choose your battles means to be selective of the problems, arguments, and confrontations that you get involved in. Instead of fighting every problem, you save your time only for the things that matter. This means fighting the most important battles and letting go of the rest.

personalexcellence.co

While most persons are familiar with the expression above, they often think about it based on deciding what to pursue, but what if we also think of it in relation to when we pursue something we desire or know is our destiny to pursue. I think it’s more often the case that nothing goes the way you want it to go. There is always a way in which your carefully laid plans are compromised by things beyond your control. you make plans and then here comes the rain, tearing at them bit by bit, until they are no more.

Then there is the case that you remain disciplined, just so you can reach that milestone in your life, and somehow the goal post is moved! We swear we are about to arrive, but then someone goes and change the venue, to a place we know not where, before we reached.

To make things even worse, we move about like mad ants, doing our best to make that thing happen, and just when we think it’s about to come together, we are hit with road block after road block; that great immovable stone. Just behind that stone lies the realization of a dream that may fail to be realized, unless we can push the blockages out of our way to reach it in time. Everything just seems a little out of reach, as my granny use to say, ” Jackass seh di worl nuh level “( It is possible for you to do everything right and still end up failing. It is possible for those who cheat and practise corruption to be successful. It’s just the way the world is – even if we feel like this is unfair ).

At this point we see the writing on the wall and decide to back down, give up, throw in the towel. We convince ourselves it’s okay to quit, move on and forget this loss.But obstacles do not equal obsolete, a detour does not mean a denial and delays only give us more time to prepare and come back stronger. Choosing your battle does not have to mean to give up on a dream. It can mean waiting on the right time to stake your claim, making that move to find your moment. It means surrendering to what must be, even if it is not what you want it to be at that time. The storm may rage, but only for a time. It is after the storm that you must take action; rebuild and reclaim that which may have been lost and get back to your fighting ways. Do not just pick your battles and skip over what may seem impossible or too difficult; but instead, decide when you will or need to do battle.

“The bad thing about my life is I have struggled a lot even to get the easiest ones but the good thing is I had the courage to fight for everything”

― P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar