In the gym, Kendrick raps “her president is Black” and I long for those days.
On the G train a construction worker tightens the bands of his hardhat “click-click-click”. Several people crank their necks in the direction of the noise. Cause for alarm? Palpable relief when we pair the noise with the object. Benign.
A stampede at Barclay’s Center after a boxing match as people believe shots have been fired when in fact they haven’t.
A Google search “what does 100 rounds fired mean”?
Should I… get a gun?
What the fuck is going on?
Was it like this all along?
I went to sleep last night thinking about how Chris and I need to talk about an active shooter plan in the restaurant. I thought about how I wouldn’t want him to try and save anybody including me, and that I would just want him to protect himself and that we would hope for the best. I calmed myself down by thinking that this doesn’t really happen in New York City in restaurants (for now), that we should be more worried about being attacked or shot on the subway. I spoke with a friend in California about my feeling of being on edge and a chronic low grade anxiety that rarely seems to abate and we both concluded that there is little that can be done. Just keep living and hoping for the best.
I read the Department of Homeland Security’s PDF “what to do in active shooter” scenario. In summary it reads, run, hide, then fight for your life in order of operation. It emphasizes the importance of staying calm, particularly for employees and managers of a public place as customers and patrons are more likely to follow their lead. In the United States we can never forget that we must rank every scenario into systems of capitalism like employee/manager and client/customer. I can only ascertain that the logic behind this is, that if the people in charge show any signs of fearing for their lives upon the arrival of a gunman, then pandemonium will surely erupt. To me it seems like all systems of rank and file should go out the window when a gunman enters (besides law enforcement who are supposed to be trained in specific protocols and follow strict orders based on rank), but that each individual should forget their “role” in the situation and do whatever it takes to survive. The report ends with comforting words that only as a last resort and if your life is in imminent danger, that you should “commit to your actions” of attacking the shooter and using any means possible like “throwing chairs at the gunman” to soften his impact and to save more lives. That is literally the best advice our leaders have for us.
I’ve been thinking about the idea that it is our unyielding belief in and our desire for a just and safe world, that is the very thing which prevents us from making meaningful change. We believe that if we could just get our shit together, then one day things will be better, everything will be fixed, and that the arc of history does indeed bend toward justice. What was happening in 2006-08 that made Obama’s campaign slogan “Hope”? I’m sure everything was also trash then, however, I don’t remember it that way, which could largely be attributed to my privileged experience of the world. Yes, there was still racism, the first economic recession of my lifetime had just started, and it was seemingly the start of major natural disasters one after another, but I don’t recall any other time during my life feeling as bleak and hopeless as things do now and that includes 9/11.
On the hard truth of being harmful beings from Hima Batavia:
Is it safe to say I don’t think we are doing it very well? I don’t think I have done it very well. But I could only begin to get better once I allowed a reality where I was harm-full to be true. That kind of acceptance leaves no room for story, for justification, for denial, for reframing. It just is a fucking hard truth. And when something just is - you can begin to examine it, dismantle it, reimagine it, reshape it. Until then, it is a very elusive and fidgety child that gets passed back and forth between people and power structures.
There has always been conflict, pain and abuse happening in the world and I don’t see any signs of it stopping in my lifetime. My personal stress response when a senseless tragedy occurs is outrage-fear-maybe an action-shutting down and then burning out and I’m sure it isn’t helping to solve the problem. I’ve been sitting here for a while trying to figure out a way to make this not sound like I am accepting gun violence, and to figure out a hopeful note to end on, but it’s not coming.
In thinking that one day things will be better and totally fixed we excuse ourselves to inaction and apathy with the comfort of thinking “one day”. It’s the same concept of pushing away your demons, they only grow larger. Try not to think of something and it’s all you will think about. If we just keep saying this isn’t us, this isn’t our nature, we’re better than this… well what is the action we take after those proclamations if we can’t even look at the truth of what we are?
The best version of me would be calling my representatives daily to express my outrage at gun violence and my support of their legislation to advance gun reform. The best version of me also meditates regularly, watches my mind jump around from one petty issue to the next, in hopes that I will one day be less bothered. The current version of me is very tired, very heartbroken and is doing her best to show up for the people in her life.
I keep coming across the idea that life is suffering which if you’ve ever opened the first page of a Buddhist text you probably have heard that before. One of my favorite ideas from Pema Chodron, is that we’re not on our way, waiting to get somewhere where our feathers are no longer ruffled, to an ideal place, but that we finally get comfortable with what she calls groundlessness, or not knowing. That we begin to accept that the ground beneath us is not sturdy or predictable and it never will be. That we learn how to coexist with our dashed hopes, to live in a brutal world filled with suffering and horrible things because to expect otherwise sets us up for an incredibly bumpy ride. It’s not nihilistic, it’s realistic.
We should still be calling our representatives and demanding the changes that we want to see, but denying the existence of the worst parts of humanity is not a fruitful starting point. I don’t want any more thoughts and prayers and I don’t want to hear another elected official say “this isn’t us”, because clearly, it is.