This past week, we celebrated John’s 50th birthday to the hilt, culminating in a yacht trip on the Bahamian sea.
50 years is a big milestone for anyone, but especially for Black men whose life expectancy is the second lowest in the United States thanks to socioeconomic factors, access to healthcare, and underlying health conditions. Every year is a gift. Every milestone, a reason to celebrate.
The day of our return, as we eased our way from paradise back into the real world, the cell phones and computers reappeared. A new client to onboard for one, four hundred emails for another, a website relaunch to review for me. Work to do that, in the name of being present, was consciously ignored. We have lived long enough to know that work will expand into the space you give it.
While we literally floated in what felt like a completely different timeline, the news cycle at home and abroad grew increasingly fraught. From protests being misrepresented to fit a political agenda to an elected official being wrestled to the ground for asking undesirable questions to a long-feared Israeli-Iranian war turned reality, the breaking news was a manifestation of our real-life brokenness.
For a few short days, the hastening unraveling had played background to our foreground. But when the chaotic stream interrupted my proverbial calm, blue sea, I felt the fray rise in my body: the anger of injustice, the fear of tyranny, the sadness of lives lost, families destroyed, entire communities carelessly dismissed.
I resented the lifting of the fog.
At the airport, people seemed short-tempered and weary—strange energy for a suntanned bunch coming off a few days of rest and relaxation. There was the attitudinal guy who cut in front of our son in the boarding lane, only to be sent backwards by the gate agent when it became clear he jumped ahead. There was the man who, instead of simply asking for the wheelchair he was supposed to receive, chose to complain his way down the entire jet bridge because someone “can’t do their job.” And finally, there was the man seated in front of us who turned to the young woman beside him and ranted about how he almost got into a fight with his neighbor from the last flight over an armrest. “They started it,” he said, “but I was going to finish it!”
John and I shot each other a look. Really?
My gut response to all of this was confusion laced with annoyance, because what is there to be mad about right now? All I saw was people who felt entitled to being first…to deference. But then it hit me. Maybe they, too, resented the lifting of the fog. Being away in a beautiful place allows temporary detachment. Deeper breathing. New views and new points of view. A lightly held awareness that not everything is burning, and not everyone is grieved.
I’m writing this edition on the flight home, mostly thinking about what it means to hold onto peace when chaos reigns. I think many of us feel we can’t afford to experience peace right now. We believe the stakes are too high and the need is too great, and that if we’re not wailing and raising our fists daily, we are useless. Could we live with ourselves if the worst we can possibly imagine gets worse than that, and we failed to sufficiently sacrifice to prevent it?
What I’m learning, though, is this: only the people who are already doing a lot worry about whether they’re doing enough. Is it because we know there are too many people choosing to do and say nothing? Is it because we’re conditioned to help—to give, to support, to heal, to serve—at our own expense? Is it both?
I think it helps to remember that we are not machines. That showing up in the ways you can when you can has to be enough. And that each of us and all of us have a right to safety, to peace, to health…to celebration. It’s not an abdication of your social responsibility to experience joy wherever you can find it and to curate moments of joy between the many sprints of saving.
Do what you feel moved to do. Share your gifts. Sacrifice. Rage against the machine. We need every force for good that we can get. And…breathe. Laugh. Take breaks. Celebrate milestones. Love your people. Let them love you. Because as we’ve all been declaring for decades but have yet to fully embrace, no one can pour from an empty cup.
Tara Jaye Frank