My parents did not raise me to be timid. Yet, as a child I could be. Good thing they believed in my ability to endure, even when I didn't.
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Panic is a funny thing. It can drive one's instincts beyond reckoning, but... it can also be a motivator, a catalyst. The spark that lights the flame. It is the drive, not to flee, but to move. To act on something.
It has taken some training to be able to be fierce in the face of fear. To have freedom in my choice to fight or to flee, and hone it into something else completely.
This week of anthropological survey- the theories, the theorists, the work laid out, has been a catalyst for all of us. We are reviewing our work, and our purpose for our work. The why's of our being here.
It is daunting.
And we are all moved.
How will the doctors, the nurses, the practitioners, come from the position of the other, in order to affect the change we all seek? How can we work from within? Our top down models of training must be left behind, then.
A fellow rebel, a Marxist and Leftist, and Iranian dissident, approached me with this question. We are mental kin. I see myself in him, and remember a time of shaved hair, rebellion. We both have our reason for being here. He will return to Iran, a journalist with new words for expression, new tools for rebellion. And me... it is here I realize, my work is not where, but what I live. We both will go back to origin.
I remember Langston Hughes, my long time influence, who had wisdom when he returned to poetry that would move the masses rather than incite a nation. He had seen terrible injustice, had lived his own pain. The Black Panther movement was a freedom for expressing this, and he became an unparalleled voice. But, if one wants to change the system, one must work from within. Windows close, doors shut, on the screaming paramour.
Langston Hughes' most memorable poems were those for every ear, from every path, religion, background, and history. But, in their fraternity to words of ease, words of sympathy, they became tuned in to him. And change was affected. Maybe small, but a ripple in the social dynamic of accepted literature, of a poet expressed, paved way for the next steps. The greatest change was achieved through a stroke of a lonely pen, rather than an anthem.
I have always fought for kids. Been incensed by systems that show blatant limits, dissolve spirits full of vigor from within. I stood on the outside of this.
At first, feeling helpless, timid.
What could I do, in the face or force of machines of education and socialization?
Then, incense- anger, the fight to create an alternative.
Panic ensues. What am I doing? How will I do it? How did I end up here?
Purpose- it comes from within all of this.
Someone once told me, I will know the path God has laid out for me when I am passionate about what I live.
My daily breathing starts with this: my living is for the betterment of all of us. To remain still and calm within the chaos. To choose purpose over panic. And DO something with it.
Our Western system is a medical model trained with the eyes of a microscope, scanning for disease, disorder, abnormality. Education, medicine, psychoanalysis- we all need new ears. New eyes. New arms for reaching out...
Or maybe just a new lens for viewing what is.
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