Kick Start Your Creativity- Day 4

Assumptions... As a person who works in social justice l shouldn't be and I hate when dominant culture people exhibit the behavior towards marginalized individuals. However, I do it all the time I don't mean towards like obvious bigots, actual gay bashers, or the kind of asshole who stops me in the street and says, "If I were like you I'd kill myself." This really happened on the street. I'm not even talking about the Holocaust denier that my friend accidentally found herself on a coffee date with. Those people are pretty clear that they have something wrong in their wiring or at least a definite lack of social skills.

I'm discussing the person who truly thinks that they would stop having a life if they needed someone to help them pee. They wouldn't. But are we, the people with the knowledge, making it a point to be publicly visible at movie theaters and in classrooms? Do we put ourselves out there as candidates for those local offices that are frequently unfulfilled?

Are we the first people to risk ourselves by reaching out to a new person who is where we were a month/six months/a year ago? When all we wanted was someone with some answers to give us a hug and tell us that whatever new identity we found ourselves suddenly inhabiting. An identity that many of us were wrongly taught was the ticket to a fate worse than death. Whatever marginalized community we are now a part of chances are we've learned. Learned that being our authentic selves beats our best day of passing by such a profound degree that it isn't even a competition. Learned that while being true to ourselves may have cost us some relationships most of the people who truly matter are still here even if our choice made them examine somethings they always thought were true. We have also met new people, who may share our new identity or may not, but at least they met our real selves. Isn't that worth every tear we've shed and every time we doubted? Why aren't we shouting our new wisdom from every rooftop?

Why aren't we deciding to be there for the next person in line? Why aren't we reaching back for them when they're to scared to reach for us? We owe that to the person who was there for us. If no one was I am sorry and there should have been. But because your needs were unmet doesn't excuse you from your duties. Be there; don't treat someone like you were. Repeating what was done to you doesn't erase your pain. It inflicts it on someone else. No one gains accept the people who spent your life trying to teach you that you were unworthy/incorrect. Don't give them evidence. They already control the airwaves.

 Live your life as well and as publicly as you can and then live it more publicly than you are comfortable with. Be the counter example. Be visible. Be loud. Kick assumption in the cojones! You deserve that life and, perhaps more importantly, whoever is watching you, their authentic self barely daring to peek out behind those false eyes you remember having, but wish you could forget, requires you to make that sacrifice and risk being visible.