For many, the past weeks and months have been devastating. Depressing, discouraging, enraging. An emboldening of hateful preexisting realities and mentalities pervading this country. For me, over the past many months and over the years of my life, I have felt -- each and every day -- the rising of my heart in the back of my throat. A feeling of dread and despair for such pervasiveness, from the reality of hate.
In my short life and in my narrow experience, what I alone have seen of this world is enough to break my heart.
In these past weeks has come a decisive blow.
No matter what, I cannot understand how the hearts of so many, especially those with power even slight, are so capable of immunity to this. Of indifference. It is not because other hearts are stronger than mine that they are intact. And no, although each day I strive to learn more of the experiences of those outside of myself and though I may yet have much more to learn, I am not wounded because I am new or innocent, as a child, to the injustices and hurts of this world.
Though I would be clear: I have known relatively little, in the scheme of death, and suffering, and war, and pain. I live with some of the greatest privilege. Aside from my womanhood. But in that too, because of the color of my skin, because of my ability, because of the country that I was born to, I am privileged.
So, for one such as I, it is unfair -- it is absurd, it is pathetic -- to complain of a heart that is broken. I do not claim that right. Not when there are little children dying in attacks in places like Syria, or ignored or overlooked in my own country, and when men and women in my own country are murdered and imprisoned and oppressed and beaten for the color of their skin. No, my experiences cannot compare. My own existential struggles, my own struggles of faith and sorrow and humanity -- those pale in the comparison to much greater pains.
Still, I would have it known to those whose hearts are indifferent, because I do not know what else to say anymore and I am begging you. To the friends of mine who continue to act with close-mindedness, who continue to embrace hate and fear and support rhetoric that would bar others from safe haven even when you are told that it is wrong, who are unwilling to embrace kindness first, who blindly follow the interpretations of interpretations of hearsay of their own small worldviews rather than pause to listen, who legitimize or justify or excuse or uphold or entertain hatefulness, to those who have plenty yet wish for more while others lack, to those who lay down their heads at night with reasonable assurance that they will wake, to those who dare to think for one moment that their own life is more worthy of safety, to those who weigh the validity of another human's worth before bothering to question the validity of their own comfort. Each and every day, you who obstructs the path of peace and kindness, each and every day you who spurns those whom do not look or pray or speak or love as you do: you break my heart.
It is not for my sake that you should care. The tender heart of a young woman such as me, that is the last thing that you -- you who are hateful, you who is indifferent -- have to answer for in this moment.
But I want you to know, indifferent person, because I have no other means left to reach you. Again and again, friends, family, fellow Americans, those of you who have power from your privilege and you use it to defend the freedoms of the hateful before you defend literal lives, you break my heart.
Nothing that is happening now in the United States or that is happening across this planet is exceptionally unique, and many know this more intimately than I. That ubiquity is not meant to comfort. It is cementing. It is infuriating. It is appalling. For some, regrettably, it the reality of existence. All of these are words which do little justice to the astonishing ability of humans to hate. Still, I think across hours, days, years -- across time -- and I am struck again and again by the cruelty of my fellow humans. I am reminded of the continuum of human history, and of the short but vicious history of the United States, which in those years alone spans genocide, slavery, misogyny and ongoing oppression.
Still, I cannot comprehend such indifference as I see in this world, particularly from those with privilege.
And of course, there is goodness in the world, too. I am reminded also of the many kind and resilient people who have walked and who still walk this earth. In their example, I mend and improve myself. In their example, I try again and again to repair and to build a more compassionate, more enduring, more learned, more strong-willed heart from the fissures in my own. But the stark contrast of good and cruelty, and the vast, painful ambiguity of all that is in between, feels many days to be an insurmountable wall. How much suffering, how many lessons of history, how many times must this play out? What would be enough, for those of you who are still hateful, to open your hearts?
What reasoning would finally be enough for you, to know that there are men and women and children who are desperate for safety and to welcome them? What reasoning would finally be enough for you to look at those who are different from yourself, and to love first? So many questions burgeon within me.
In these past days, it is dangerous not to keep these questions in my mind. For, it seems increasingly that if one looks away for but a moment, the enmity of this world is all the quicker to encroach.
It is something I have never been able to comprehend, the unkindness of so many who have so much. Yet, so very often, those without are selflessly generous. These days, such hurts and such confusion and such divides continue to play out on a national and global level.
My privilege has retained for me the right to speak up, at least for a time and at least in some measure. I take that very seriously. But I plan and remind myself each and everyday to use whatever power that I have, for the sake of good in spite of the reality of people in my own country who cling to their hatreds, misconceptions, and selfish fears.
I harbor each of these hurts like a thorn, and I remember it. Though it is enough to break my soft and sheltered heart, it is not enough to break my resolve. It is not enough to break my voice. Nor should it, for there are much greater fights where effort should be spent rather than within my own chest. Now is not the time, except that I share this as a desperate plea.
Because I hope, if you have the gall to act with such hatefulness that would cast aside your fellow humans fleeing fear and death and persecution, the gall to place yourselves as more worthy of peace and safety than any other, that you also have the gall to look me in the eyes as you turn in the knife to my heart too. For, perhaps you will never meet the ones who your decisions and your words and your actions (or your inaction) devastate through their consequence. Perhaps you will never know or admit or relate to the resounding tragedies of the policies that you support, or the politics that you embrace because they do not harm you personally. Perhaps your empathy is unable to extend beyond those in your immediate awareness.
But you have met me. And I am telling you just what you do. Remember it. If I live a hundred years, though I mend my heart and forge on despite you, I will not forget it.
In my short life and in my narrow experience, what I alone have seen of this world is enough to break my heart.
In these past weeks has come a decisive blow.
No matter what, I cannot understand how the hearts of so many, especially those with power even slight, are so capable of immunity to this. Of indifference. It is not because other hearts are stronger than mine that they are intact. And no, although each day I strive to learn more of the experiences of those outside of myself and though I may yet have much more to learn, I am not wounded because I am new or innocent, as a child, to the injustices and hurts of this world.
Though I would be clear: I have known relatively little, in the scheme of death, and suffering, and war, and pain. I live with some of the greatest privilege. Aside from my womanhood. But in that too, because of the color of my skin, because of my ability, because of the country that I was born to, I am privileged.
So, for one such as I, it is unfair -- it is absurd, it is pathetic -- to complain of a heart that is broken. I do not claim that right. Not when there are little children dying in attacks in places like Syria, or ignored or overlooked in my own country, and when men and women in my own country are murdered and imprisoned and oppressed and beaten for the color of their skin. No, my experiences cannot compare. My own existential struggles, my own struggles of faith and sorrow and humanity -- those pale in the comparison to much greater pains.
Still, I would have it known to those whose hearts are indifferent, because I do not know what else to say anymore and I am begging you. To the friends of mine who continue to act with close-mindedness, who continue to embrace hate and fear and support rhetoric that would bar others from safe haven even when you are told that it is wrong, who are unwilling to embrace kindness first, who blindly follow the interpretations of interpretations of hearsay of their own small worldviews rather than pause to listen, who legitimize or justify or excuse or uphold or entertain hatefulness, to those who have plenty yet wish for more while others lack, to those who lay down their heads at night with reasonable assurance that they will wake, to those who dare to think for one moment that their own life is more worthy of safety, to those who weigh the validity of another human's worth before bothering to question the validity of their own comfort. Each and every day, you who obstructs the path of peace and kindness, each and every day you who spurns those whom do not look or pray or speak or love as you do: you break my heart.
It is not for my sake that you should care. The tender heart of a young woman such as me, that is the last thing that you -- you who are hateful, you who is indifferent -- have to answer for in this moment.
But I want you to know, indifferent person, because I have no other means left to reach you. Again and again, friends, family, fellow Americans, those of you who have power from your privilege and you use it to defend the freedoms of the hateful before you defend literal lives, you break my heart.
Nothing that is happening now in the United States or that is happening across this planet is exceptionally unique, and many know this more intimately than I. That ubiquity is not meant to comfort. It is cementing. It is infuriating. It is appalling. For some, regrettably, it the reality of existence. All of these are words which do little justice to the astonishing ability of humans to hate. Still, I think across hours, days, years -- across time -- and I am struck again and again by the cruelty of my fellow humans. I am reminded of the continuum of human history, and of the short but vicious history of the United States, which in those years alone spans genocide, slavery, misogyny and ongoing oppression.
Still, I cannot comprehend such indifference as I see in this world, particularly from those with privilege.
And of course, there is goodness in the world, too. I am reminded also of the many kind and resilient people who have walked and who still walk this earth. In their example, I mend and improve myself. In their example, I try again and again to repair and to build a more compassionate, more enduring, more learned, more strong-willed heart from the fissures in my own. But the stark contrast of good and cruelty, and the vast, painful ambiguity of all that is in between, feels many days to be an insurmountable wall. How much suffering, how many lessons of history, how many times must this play out? What would be enough, for those of you who are still hateful, to open your hearts?
What reasoning would finally be enough for you, to know that there are men and women and children who are desperate for safety and to welcome them? What reasoning would finally be enough for you to look at those who are different from yourself, and to love first? So many questions burgeon within me.
In these past days, it is dangerous not to keep these questions in my mind. For, it seems increasingly that if one looks away for but a moment, the enmity of this world is all the quicker to encroach.
It is something I have never been able to comprehend, the unkindness of so many who have so much. Yet, so very often, those without are selflessly generous. These days, such hurts and such confusion and such divides continue to play out on a national and global level.
My privilege has retained for me the right to speak up, at least for a time and at least in some measure. I take that very seriously. But I plan and remind myself each and everyday to use whatever power that I have, for the sake of good in spite of the reality of people in my own country who cling to their hatreds, misconceptions, and selfish fears.
I harbor each of these hurts like a thorn, and I remember it. Though it is enough to break my soft and sheltered heart, it is not enough to break my resolve. It is not enough to break my voice. Nor should it, for there are much greater fights where effort should be spent rather than within my own chest. Now is not the time, except that I share this as a desperate plea.
Because I hope, if you have the gall to act with such hatefulness that would cast aside your fellow humans fleeing fear and death and persecution, the gall to place yourselves as more worthy of peace and safety than any other, that you also have the gall to look me in the eyes as you turn in the knife to my heart too. For, perhaps you will never meet the ones who your decisions and your words and your actions (or your inaction) devastate through their consequence. Perhaps you will never know or admit or relate to the resounding tragedies of the policies that you support, or the politics that you embrace because they do not harm you personally. Perhaps your empathy is unable to extend beyond those in your immediate awareness.
But you have met me. And I am telling you just what you do. Remember it. If I live a hundred years, though I mend my heart and forge on despite you, I will not forget it.
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