Sometimes I have so much to write I end up writing nothing at all. This is where I’ve been the last few weeks.
I’ve also been conscious of my mood. I was angry.
White hot, searing, rage-angry.
It was something I had held on to for most of my life. It had accumulated, an ever condensing mass, surging and transforming into a pulsing core of emotional molten lava.
And I let it flow.
And I needed to let it cool, in order to walk upon it. To explore and investigate the damage.
I needed to check in with the people I love. I needed to check in with my self.
And then I thought to write about emotion, or about emotional regulation. About personal leadership, intellectual autonomy, ideology and revolution.
But all I really want to say, is thank you for being here. For staying with me while I work out what is happening, why it is happening, how to respond. The world is changing and we are all changing with it. Some of us are trying to adapt and even influence change, others are trying to avoid and circumvent change. But the momentum has gathered and there is no stopping the transformation that is occurring now. We have only to choose which side of history to join. The crowd on the beach or those riding the waves.
The identity work we do in order to adapt helps build a bridge between generations, between groups more or less capable of change, and between those who lead and those who refuse. And this is why I had to let my anger out, why I could no longer repress the emotion of a young girl criticized too many times, or the middle-aged woman dismissed. These aspects of my identity, and several more, have had no place, no voice in our society. Told to get on with it, let the men handle it, and while you’re at it, get over it. The years of conditioning, the automatic responses, I struggled to turn them off.
The extent of systemic abuse in western society is abhorrent. Nepotism, narcissism and coercive control have been normalized by corporate culture. The divide between ‘us’ and ‘them’, might not be quite what you think.
When your female GP is, due to her own burnout, emotionally dismissive and disrespectful towards you as you describe your experience of menopause, the glitches in the system are both subtle and overt. And as gentle as a bulldozer ripping down a tree.
But somewhere in the ‘system’ there are people. And I am angry at those who would deliberately cause others suffering. Who would deliberately, knowingly allow others to suffer. Who would do so without remorse, without considering the damage, without considering the long-term consequences, the unintended outcomes. Who, after being told of their crimes, would commit them over again.
I am angry at those who would tear down a forest to pay for a car.
I am angry at those who would shoot a child to please a dictator.
Who would tear down a forest to pay for a car?
Who would use a child to please an abuser?
I was angry. It was functional and necessary, and now it has passed.
And now I understand the fear that drives those who harm us, and I understand the power I have when I say ‘no more’.
But here I am, now in this moment and it is time to turn. Before I get lost in the shadows and become cold and dark my self.
I feel the excitement. Summer is almost here again.
May you be happy,
May you be healthy,
May you be free from suffering.
Namaste,
SB’F x
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