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Two years ago today, over 200 of us gathered in Tilden Park to say our goodbyes to George Schnakenberg III, to tell stories of his life and to give thanks for what a vibrant, open-hearted, adventurous and lovable man he was. After watching these speeches, I am amazed once again by the legacy he left behind, and the love, kindness and appreciation that we all felt that day in his honor. I am amazed by my own ability to sit in front of a crowd, 5 days after his death and 4 days before giving birth, and speak with a calm knowing and inner strength that only George could have given me. And, I am so very grateful.
I am grateful for everyone who participated in planning the memorial, from choosing the site and inviting the people to designing the altars and displays, from hooking up sound and giving speeches to bringing food and making grilled cheeses. I am grateful for everyone who showed up, on such short notice, to sit in the heat of the summer so that we could all be together for such a wild and momentous occasion. And I am grateful for all the people who have made me feel loved and held over the last two years, through so many acts of kindness and generosity, too many people to list and too many gifts to name. You have made an indelible impact on my life and I want to say, sincerely, Thank You. I would not have made it here without you.  Me and Nova, today. July 22, 2016. And just like that, it’s been two years.
Sometimes it feels like the snap of my fingers, and other times it feels like I’ve been climbing this mountain for a hell of a long time. But this is Life. Life in its purest form. Pain and heartbreak and love and beauty, collapsed into a single moment in time. At once taking me hostage while liberating me from a life void of meaning; capturing me in all of its intensity while freeing me from ease and boredom. My life is rich with experience and emotion. The past two years have been nothing short of spectacular.  Joanne, age 5. Around the time when things got hard. It’s been a rough week. I honestly have not known how to write, act, think, speak, express, or rationalize in the wake of the world’s current events. I am heartbroken, and I feel helpless. The whole world has gone mad.
Hate crimes, terrorist attacks, bombings, police shootings, civilian shootings, cities under siege and starving to death -- and here I am, in my cute little cottage in the suburbs, trying to build a life for myself with a still-heavy heart and less energy than is required to raise a toddler, and I am truly at a loss for how to respond. Just today, a truck intentionally plowed through a Bastille Day celebration in France killing more than 70 people, and it's almost too much to process. The mind goes numb. Day after day, I search for the right words. I try to tease out meaning from my overloaded brain. I know there is something worth saying, something profound that will lend hope and comfort to the suffering. But I can’t find it. My mind runs in all directions, and hits a wall each time. It feels like I should give up and get cozy on my couch with a movie and a bowl of popcorn and let someone else figure it out. Life keeps moving. Onto the next. But I cannot continue living my life in earnest with blinders on. I cannot turn my heart against the suffering, and pretend it doesn’t affect me. This, what is happening in the world, is happening to all of us. Pretending that we are immune to the fear, violence, and prejudice that fuel these rampant ideas of separation and superiority is to pretend that we are not human. Lives are being destroyed and disregarded on the basis of arbitrary power, and we all have our stories of power and prejudice to consider. I am struggling through mine, but I am willing and wanting to learn. John Pavlovitz writes in a post from July 7, 2016 about the deaths of two black men, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, at the hands of police officers: “As a white man I realize that I’ll never escape some inherent racism. It’s built into my operating system. My whiteness and nearly five decades in the cushy shoes of privilege will continue to create blind spots for me that are almost impossible to discern without a great deal of self-awareness, a lot of help, and a teachable spirit. And even then, despite every way that I try to stay aware of it, I will still unknowingly participate in both personal and systematic discrimination.” I so appreciate this admittance. We really need more of this. Less finger pointing and more willingness to investigate the ways in which we participate in racism, fear, and ignorance. The lives that have been taken cannot be brought back, but we can make sure they were not taken in vain. We can allow these events to increase our self-awareness and work harder to be better, kinder, more loving and compassionate humans. We can get curious about the emotions that surface when we’re faced with people and things that we don’t understand, people that are different from us based on color, religion, sexual orientation, financial need, mental and physical disability, criminal status, the list goes on. We can admit that we have not walked a mile in another man’s shoes, that we feel inherently separate from that which we have not experienced, and that sometimes, what we don’t understand scares us. This is being human. What is not being human, is to choose fear and hate over love and empathy. This pattern is learned, and it will destroy us. I grew up as a 1st generation Chinese girl in upper middle-class (white) suburban America, fearing white children for the racial slurs and jokes they would throw at me and turning against my race for the pain and isolation it caused. I grew up hating being Chinese. I hated that my parents spoke another language that was used on the playground to mock me, I hated that my slanted eyes were an amusement to others, and I hated being simultaneously ridiculed and overlooked at school. Treatment of this kind at a young age without any acknowledgment or invitation to discuss my experience with teachers, parents, or other forms of authority drove me to believe that the messages I received were true. I was inferior because of my race, and it was within ordinary limits for me to be punished for that. My response back then was to try as hard as I could to be white, to join them instead of fight them, to separate from my ethnicity as much as possible. As I grew into adulthood, the racial landscape seemed to shift. Moving out to California after college likely played a role in that, where being Asian was hardly considered the minority. I got a job, I met a white man, I married, and those decades of feeling like an outsider were essentially erased. It wasn’t until my early 30s that I began to recall this plight I had carried as a child, this silent racism I participated in against my own race, this belief that white was superior to non-white. It was a “Holy Shit” moment, an amazement to me both then and now, that we can hold these asinine ideas about ourselves and the world without even being conscious of it. I learned a lot about myself during that time. But it is obvious to me now that I still have a lot of work to do. There are layers upon layers of deeply rooted beliefs and narratives that need to be uncovered and investigated. Prejudices run deep, and the messages we receive as children are not easily dismissed. I look around today, and I wonder how much of my life has been informed by my race-related experiences as a child. The large majority of my friends are white. With one exception, I have only been with white men. I have chosen to live in predominantly white neighborhoods. I say I am all for equality and diversity, but there is very little diversity in my life. Something is not right. And after saying all of this, I still don’t know what to say. I do know that I wish I’d taken a different path as a child. I wish I’d had a safe place to talk about what I was experiencing. I wish I’d been strong enough to fight back, to ask for help, to want to understand what was really happening instead of silently accepting that racial power exists and that I am powerless to change it. But it’s not too late. As long as we are alive we can choose to challenge our beliefs and rebuild our identities. In our hearts, if we go back to the time before messages of fear, hate, and separatism were implanted, we can find our true nature -- loving kindness for all beings everywhere and a willingness to walk alongside our brothers and sisters with mutual honor and respect. May we use this tumultuous time to fuel our own evolutions and guide the next generation towards a more loving and peaceful existence. May I have the courage to address my own demons and change the lens I've been hiding behind. May all humans everywhere choose love and empathy over fear and hate. What a wonderful world it could be. |
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