Let’s Be Better

I watched the George Floyd video and like most other Americans felt a range of emotions. Perhaps the strongest was sadness. Sadness for the life gone. Sadness for the hurt that has been and will come. Sadness for the injustice of it all.

I’m sad because I know that, like Ahmaud Arbery and many others before him, George Floyd’s death will insight anger, protest, and media attention and then his name will he added to the list of people we forget about until there is another tragedy. We will say enough is enough. We will call for change. We will demand action, and then, we will move on. It isn’t right, but it’s what we always do. We are outraged while we’re supposed to be until the next thing comes along demanding our attention and then we are outraged about that. We are creatures of habit in that way and I hate it.

I wish that we weren’t. I wish that instead of screaming that we have a problem every time the problem presents itself as a life lost, we would keep using our voices when there is no media attention to assure us.

I can’t help but think of it like cancer...when we notice something is off in our body, we go to the doctor. She tells us it’s cancer and we begin working to get rid of it. The work is painful, time consuming, and very inconvenient and uncomfortable, but, still, we show up. We commit to getting rid of the problem killing our body.

Racism, poverty, abuse, and evil are the the cancers killing our communities. The senseless deaths of men and women of color are destroying and dividing our humanity and we need to put in the work to combat it. We don’t need to just scream and cry when it’s current, we need to intentionally act when it’s not scrolling across our news feed.

Like the remedy for cancer, we need to work toward healing when it’s uncomfortable and inconvenient. We need to show up to treat the problem when it doesn’t seem like it’s there because we know that even though we aren’t seeing it in front of our face, it’s lying under the surface, and likely growing.

If we don’t want to keep shouting into the wind every couple of months about a problem we already know we have, we need to work together to fix it when the wind isn’t blowing.

Let’s be humble and realize that hate, ignorance, and arrogance have roots we didn’t even know existed. Let’s have the tough conversations and say, “I’m sorry” more than we ever thought we would. Let’s listen and recognize our place in the world; whether privilege or perspective. Let’s stay committed even when it’s time consuming and uncomfortable. Let’s be better.