So I didn't go out last night. I took a shower and ironed my clothes, but I didn't turn any music on. That was the mistake, as I got sleepy and decided it wasn't worth it. Decision really looked good when I fell asleep and woke up twice before the club night would have ended. Not going allowed me to have a pretty full day today, which really made me happy.
I finally cleaned/straightened my room this morning, and returned it to pre-cohabitant levels. No bunch of stuff just taking up space, I can see my floor - just about all of it, and there are hardly any clothes laying around. All I have to do to get the rest of the house right is wash some clothes, handle some dishes, and clean the bathroom. I also got rid of some plastic bottles that I meant to recycle - that is, until I found out that it often takes more energy and effort to recycle most plastics than the recycling ends up saving. At any rate, the place looks much better than it did when I woke up this morning.
I also found time to watch Karla Martinez, the fine Tamron Hall, and the beautiful Richelle Carey. All were as delightful as usual. I may not see any of them again until May, so I certainly enjoyed today. Also played some College Town, watched the UConn men beat Villanova, went grocery shopping, and I'm now watching the UConn women before Raw comes on. I may work out during Raw, but I may not because my cousin told me working out at night makes it harder to go to sleep. I need to be tired/go to sleep before midnight so being at the j-o at 8:30 isn't that big a burden. I also took the time to get most of my clothes ready for the week (need to iron a couple shirts still) and cut my hair. Oddly enough, that was the first time I cut my hair in 2011.
Anyway, that's my full day...other than the new jack swing marathon I had going while I was cleaning. Mostly Bobby Brown, Keith Sweat, and Johnny Gill. Straight 1986-1993 flavor. Also put a FB note out there that I wrote over the weekend about MLK Day. It's quite lengthy, and is after the break.
As I mentioned in the previous (non-football) note, this edition is going to tie a few different things together. I don't know how it's going to turn out yet, since I write as I go along - and obviously haven't gotten very far yet. No outline, no pondering. I admit I feel a little pressure since 1) I did one last year, and 2) I did kind-of lead up to this in the last note. So what am I going to do? Write and see what happens.
Last Wednesday, as everyone knows, marked the anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti. What many people will quickly do is equate the earthquake to another natural consequence (the event isn't a disaster: the resulting damage is). Of course I'm talking about Hurricane Katrina. There are similarities: both disproportionately affected people of color. Shoot, the people of Louisiana and the Haitian people both have ancestry with elements of French culture. People were displaced, economies were ruined, I could go on and on. There's one thing in particular that both had in common, but I'll get to that in a minute.
Two Saturdays ago a congresswoman was at an event interacting with her constituents. A federal judge was there, as was a nine-year-old girl. Everyone knows what happened there too. Someone decided to go on a shooting spree. Several lives ended. Many more were forever altered. Suddenly, the biggest politically-themed story from Arizona was no longer the one about immigration. It was about someone getting shot for engaging in what is the purest part of a political process in which so much is tainted. It was about the people who were killed simply for being in attendance. Of course both sides of the political spectrum blamed the other and went through the usual pattern that many of us are so sick of. The problem is that neither chose to see that this was bigger than liberalism or conservatism. It wasn't about the second amendment or mud-slinging or even the fact that Gabrielle Giffords had been subject to insidious behavior before the shooting. People were shot and killed because someone went crazy. Isn't that enough?
Looking past the political stuff, people did come together to express condolences regarding the shooting. This is where the Greene article from the last note (http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/01/12/greene.civility/index.html?hpt=C1) comes in, and how these different events - among others - combine to push us into a different state. To be honest, that state is a place we should visit more often. These events and others - 9/11 being at the top of the list - remind us all that we are the same in many different aspects. We have the same hopes, the same dreams, the same desires. We have the same concerns, the same fears, the same problems. We all want the rent to not be too [dang] high. We want good schools for our children. We want to feel safe walking down the street. As Greene said, we only discover that we have commonalities when tragedy strikes. When we're living our lives happily and everything is going well, we're as different as can be. I'm black, you're white. I'm a man, you're a woman. I'm young, you're old. I like rap, you can't stand the stuff.
Shoot, we identify ourselves based on differences and often live our lives based on the lines of demarcation that those differences draw...except when something bad happens. Then we're all one society. We're all humans. We're all Americans. We feel bad for those most directly affected and we want to do what we can to help. It's a sad thing that we can only get together in such circumstances and are torn apart through differences - whether natural or manmade - at most, if not all, other times. There's one thing even sadder, though - which is the biggest tragedy of all.
Those times that we get together and remember we're all human - they are short and fleeting. Actually, let me say it another way: they keep stopping. We have these times when we start acting like an actual civilized society - as opposed to different sub-societies pretending to be a full society - and then those times are gone. They don't go away in a flash (in most instances). They go away slowly, little by little: so slowly that we don't even notice. Maybe that's how we continually fall into this abyss of separation: we don't notice when it happens. A tragic event happens and we're all concerned. We give to the Red Cross or Yele Haiti, we fly our American flags, we send water and non-perishable items...and then we stop.
I'm not saying we can afford to give ten dollars or several cans of food every week. I'm talking about our general disposition. We stop caring about whatever it is that brings us together, and eventually stop caring about each other. As the time grows since the tragedy that brings us together has taken place, our capacity to escape our own myopia and see outside our own windows diminishes. It gets smaller, as though it's literally in our rearview mirror and we're driving away. We go right back to living apart...and we surely live apart.
This is (finally) where Dr. King comes in. As everyone knows, he sp...let me back up. Not everyone knows that he spent his life trying to bring people together. Yes, his main aim - in the beginning - was obviously to make America realize and live up to its promise with particular respect to black people. He also wanted to bring people together, though. Of course, in the capiltalist United States his ideology wasn't well-received by all. Some thought he was a Communist. Some thought he was a socialist (yes, there's a difference; and no, I don't think that communism or socialism is inherently bad - but that discussion is for another day). Some think he just wanted to elevate black people at the expense of others. I have to literally sigh - and I just did - at how people can get a different message than the one he stated numerous times in his speeches and his books. I can't recall him wavering: his push for equality was just that...a push for equality. Living together was part of that equality: not only did he say "we must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools", he explicitly stated twice during his most famous speech that our being able to live together was part of his dream.
Here's the thing: if we live apart, we can't live together. The two actions are mutually exclusive. If you don't think we live apart, drive around. Look around. Think for a few seconds. We don't live together in terms of homes and addresses, nor do we live together in terms of thought. Half of us support one political ideology and half support the other, when said ideologies are (seemingly) polar opposites. Half of us (not necessarily the same half) say there's nothing wrong with society and half confront societal ills every day. We live in such different circumstances it's almost impossible to imagine everyone getting along...but it can happen without anyone giving up the things that make us unique. We can live together without being the same. Dr. King never said anything about anyone being assimilated into someone else's culture, about anyone losing the self-reliance that they had in favor of seemingly greener pastures, about anyone losing the self-determination that made them who they were and was refined through years of struggle. That stuff just...happened.
He did say that he wanted everyone to be able to be judged on nothing more than - all together now - the content of their character. He wanted America to be based on a meritocracy that is free of the burdens that our differences place upon us. Shouldn't matter what the six genes show (six genes out of thousands determine one's skin color). Shouldn't matter where we live in terms of geographic area or of neighbrhood, speaking of neighborhood mainly in terms of SES. Shouldn't matter where we come from, who our parents are, what school we went to, or whether we even went to school...all that should matter is our merit. Nice thought, but what does that have to do with this "living together" idea?
If that other stuff doesn't mean so much - or, better stated, doesn't mean what it currently means - then we can deal with said other stuff on much lighter and more comfortable terms and it becomes that much easier for us to live as one society. If we don't look at race, SES, income, or some other demographic to tell us everything about others - as these absolute measures of their personality and character - then that would (hopefully) take away much of the tension that is presently inherent in discussions on these things. Race, in particular, seems to be this taboo subject that no one wants to talk about. People often get defensive when it comes up, and those defense mechanisms stand in the way of productive discussion. Yes, we're of different races. Yes, racism exists - note I didn't say "existed", I said "exists" - and has a deleterious (shout out to Joe Clark and Morgan Freeman) effect on society. We can't allow it to be the reason that we stop trying or never try to get to know each other and live as one society. We have to move past it, get around it, get over it, or whatever euphemism you choose. We have to show our children that we can do better. We have to show ourselves that we can do better. Same goes with differences regarding the other demographics. We cannot allow these things to keep us apart.
Imagine someone lifting weights. How do we determine how much they can lift? It's always the amount immediately below that which they can't lift - that amount that they can't move to the place where it needs to go. That Peter Principle-influenced idea also applies to us living together: our strength as a society is (going to be) determined by what we can't move out of the way. If we can't move these things - racism, sexism, classism, ageism, etc. - out of the way, not only will they be what defines us as a society but they will also be what breaks us.
We let these prejudices and preferences keep us apart for no good earthly reason, and then when tragedy strikes - whether it happens in a fleeting moment or it permeates a nation for almost 400 years and a group of people (because as much credit as Dr. King deserves, he surely was not alone) rises up against it - we come together. We live as we were intended to live. We act like the one society that we're supposed to be. The world starts to look like the promised land that Dr. King spoke of...and note, he didn't say 'lands'. He didn't say 'lands' because he knew that in order for us to be free, we have to live together. Willing separation now keeps us all from being free and realizing our collective potential, just as forced segregation kept our parents and grandparents from being free. For that matter, being forced together wouldn't help any either. We have to see and understand that living together as one (willingly) represents an evolution in societal behavior that is both badly needed and long overdue.
I remember standing outside Sabal Palm Elementary School (it has since been renamed in honor of Dr. King) on a nippy Monday morning twenty-five years ago. I remember the excitement that surrounded the area, and that which surrounded my second-grade class the previous week. Everyone was in on the holiday. It was an exciting time, a time in which a man who was the face of a cause that did more to unite the world than any in history, was deservedly honored. In the 25 years since, we still have not yet found our way to the mountaintop that Dr. King talked about the night before he died. We get close in times of tragedy, but then we slide back down thanks to the gravitational pulls of separation and closed-mindedness. That in itself is the greatest tragedy of all, and we must eliminiate that tragedy from our hearts and minds. We must, as Dr. King said, "rise up tonight with a greater readiness...stand with a greater determination...move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be". Only then will we truly be "free at last".
Happy MLK Day.
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