There are no sides to take in this conflict -- only the decision to speak and act from a place of hate or from a place of love.
I see your anger on my screen. I feel your anger, fear, hate coming through your words — expressions of justified outrage. Yet, I wonder if we all took a moment without expression, to feel this emotion in our bodies. Would those feelings really be anger and hate? I think if we really dig down beneath the anger and are honest with ourselves about the feelings that underlie our rage, we would find sadness, grief, heartbreak, helplessness, hopelessness. These are not powerful emotions, but vulnerable one. These are emotions essentially of love, because without love I don’t think this kind of hurt is possible. These are the emotions with which I’m grappling at the moment.
I believe that to immediately express our outrage is to bypass the depth of feeling going on within at this moment. Anger is an emotion that creates separateness, and what I really want and need right now is to remember that we are all humans with hearts and minds and stories and families, experiencing this world together. At our depths lies goodness and love, even when it is shrouded by fear, anger, and hate. I am so sad, and I need to know that the anger being expressed around me is grounded in the profound heartbreak that comes from empathy, sympathy, and compassion.
Please, in this moment of grief, let us not misdirect our anger. Let us come together and fix a broken system, not retaliate against individuals and become polarized into “opposite sides.” Problems cannot be solved when we are separate -- worlds apart, looking through the narrow lens of outrage and hate. Expressions of anger may feel validating, but only serve to compound and spread more anger. Instead, can we express what we really feel?
I am sad -- heartbroken -- feeling loss into the core of my being. And I know it’s because I love each of you, and I can relate in some way with loss of all those involved in this violence. Yet I see the goodness, the strength, the light, and the vast potential that exists within us all. May we connect with that part of ourselves, and with one another, to express love rather than hate in service of much-needed peace.
#blacklivesmatter #backtheblue #looktothelight #lovewins