My Heart Hurts: We Are One Family

Art by Gaelle Marcel

Yesterday, my body collapsed and I was shrouded in despair and feelings of hopelessness over how we hurt one another.  The weight in my heart gripped me in a state of grief and emptiness.  Hopelessness and despair is a feeling that so many people live with every day.  When you are constantly being denied, denigrated, blamed, shamed and worse in fear for your life, you can’t help but feel hopeless while the fire of an inner flame burns for equality.  How demoralizing and bereft it is to not be free in a country that expounds freedom.  I can only imagine the daily anguish felt from living this way.  It is apparent that the acute pain caused by vile racism has plagued our nation since its inception causing the division and hatred we are experiencing today.  We can no longer ignore the inequality and subjugation of any human.  The separation we have caused is tearing us apart....

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Abraham Lincoln’s words are as true today as when he spoke them. “A house divided against itself, cannot stand.” We must heal or this sickness will continue the chaos and destroy our nation and us. My heart hurts and this pain won’t easily go away and won’t until we care and recognize we are one humanity.

Today, I see a glimmer of hope.  I see people of all colors standing for a change that needs to happen, for justice, equality, and treating each and every person with respect.  Most people protesting are doing so in a peaceful way to raise awareness of the tragic injustice happening to black and disenfranchised groups of people.  These are people with their hearts open.  They feel and they care.
 
We have a long way to go.  Storms of violence have spread across the nation.  It is painful to see violence, and it is a reflection of the violence against human lives that has been fostered through oppression. There are those that are fighting for their life.  When you have been shoved down and your anguish and pleas have been ignored the buried rage to survive bursts out, often in exceedingly destructive ways.  You may judge it or not understand it but this reaction comes from a natural will to live and for justice to be enacted.  Desperation causes desperate acts.

Desperation Causes Desperate Acts

Fear Closes the Heart

There is another insidious element of malicious violence that is being incited to create division and separation.  There are those that do not want peace and harmony or justice and equality.  Their racism stems from fear and entitlement.  It closes one's heart to the suffering of others.  Cold hatred lashes out with a desire to keep others down.  These people do not want change or unity.  They manipulate the view of the protests and create more fear and retaliation by threatening rhetoric or by intermingling with peaceful protestors and agitating violence by setting fires, looting and causing destruction.    
 
As we know, violence begets violence and although the chaos is bringing an awareness that we cannot ignore, it is also breeding more hatred and misunderstanding.  All attacks against protestors, bystanders, journalists, police, shop owners, and neighbors are toxic.  None of the violence and destruction is acceptable or will bring peace.  What to do? 

Open to the Pain

This can only be solved by adjusting our consciousness away from the mental distortions of fear and into the depths of our heart.  This means feeling the pain, despair, futility, and sense of powerlessness that is held within our fellow humans.  At the deepest core of our being, we must open ourselves to feeling the suffering we cause each other through our defensive nature of separation.  It takes courage to move beyond conditioned fear and to reach for understanding and compassion.  Justice will prevail when we stand up to the truth of our dysfunction.  When will we see that championing equality with the right to life and liberty benefits everyone? 
 
Can you not see that if you hurt another, you hurt yourself as well?  We are interdependent.  What I do affects you and what you do affects me.  Our nation and our world are out of balance because we believe we must compete, outwit, dominate and fight.  These are primitive behaviors that no longer work.  We are destroying ourselves.  Let’s stop the hatred.  Let’s lift each other up and care for one another.

Allow Feeling to Connect You

The world has rapidly changed.  We are connected globally and we cannot go backwards into some past that really wasn’t just.  In this mechanized world, will we succumb to numbness and ignore the pain caused from righteous indignation?  Will we lose all of our feeling and with it our connection to one another?  If we do not learn how to care, cooperate and empower one another, we will perish.  Let’s realize that our unique differences are valuable gifts that strengthen all of us.  Will you allow yourself to feel?

My heart aches….and that is good.

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