ON BEING MYOPIC: A CONFESSION
I HAVE BEEN MYOPIC. For most of my life I have seen only what was in front of me. Caught up in my little whirlwind of work and family, racism was something way in the distance along a foggy horizon. I couldn’t see it. Perhaps I didn’t want to see it. But then I saw the killing of George Floyd, and it murdered my blindness. What I saw in that eight-minute-forty-six-second video sickened and horrified me. But more than that, it broke my heart - by which I mean it broke OPEN my heart such that it can never be closed again to the wreckage of white on black lives. So while I know I will never have the clarity of vision of these Arabian falcons (who can spot a mouse from two miles away), I can now see clearly this monstrous truth that lives amongst us, and I will never be able to unsee it ever again.
But now what? How can I contribute to the healing that is so needed? What can I possibly do to help the world spin the way it should? This dream of equality can no longer be deferred, but what can I do to push it - even a little - towards reality? Pretty pictures and pretty words won’t cut it, I know. But what will? I don’t know yet. But, as Beau Taplin wrote, "I do know this: I am ALL in, Here and Now, until I’m dead in the dirt. No matter how difficult it gets. Or how desperately the world tries to tear us all apart.”
(Falcons are visually oriented creatures, so much so that if they can’t see it, it must not be there. Thus the reason for the hoods. It keeps them unruffled by the world before a hunt. Pull off the hoods, however, and they go nuts, as suddenly they see EVERYTHING. Hmm. I can relate.)
“Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.” - Benjamin Franklin
