Anna Colibri | Writer & Digital Marketer

I was worried, now that I’m single, about meeting new people and having to explain myself.

I thought it would be hard to explain my divorce, my children, my relationships, my sexual orientation, and my philosophy of life. Then I realized that, even if my own life seems complicated, we all require explanation no matter who or what we are. Otherwise, how will anyone we care about really get to know us and understand us and vice versa?

So the quick answer is, yes, I do have to explain myself — and so do you if you want to be known and understood.

Remember how Shakespeare said, “Know thyself and to thine own self be true?” The old bard was onto something. . .

Assuming I’m right, and we do have to explain ourselves, how will we do it if we don’t know ourselves? Knowing ourselves, naturally, is somewhat easier said than done.

I had an experience about 16 years ago, not long after my daughter died, that ended up changing my world view. I was sitting in my home office, looking out the window, crying. I was in a lot of pain, thinking about how I’d lost such a pure, radiant, innocent, and beautiful child. It came to me suddenly that I, too, had once been a pure, radiant, innocent, and beautiful child — and so has everyone else. In fact, I realized, we never stop having within us that purity, radiance, innocence, and beauty. It is our true self.

This I find difficult to remember and easy to forget. It was, at the time, a revelation to me, but now that transcendent understanding has been reduced to knowledge and memory. I wish I could tell you that, right now, I can feel the ecstasy of our true nature, but I can’t. I’m typing away, feeling kind of tired and anxious about how my work day will go, and I definitely do not feel pure, radiant, innocent, and beautiful. Still, having had that glimpse of what I consider a higher truth of who I am and who we are is fortifying.

As just hinted, the truth of who we are is is not usually how we live. Whenever I talk about human beings as expressions of beauty, radiance, innocence, and purity, the occasional person agrees with me but mostly I get strong reactions ranging from skepticism to hints that I am kind of dumb, to even a kind of offended anger.

Yes, we do grow up, and life hands us many difficulties and injustices, and most of us make poor and hurtful choices along with good, sweet, and neutral ones, but above all and always we remain at heart and soul beautiful, radiant, pure, and innocent — a kind of light. Knowledge of ourselves and everyone as pure, radiant, innocent, and beautiful is an antidote to the fear, doubt, and insecurity that we often feel as we negotiate our way through life.

At another level, we are individual expressions of that fundamental light and as a result some of us prefer to wear flannel shirts and biker boots while some of prefer little black dresses or shorts and a tee shirt. I mention these preferences as the merest hint of the infinite ways humans are expressed biologically, culturally, linguistically, and individually.

What happens, and it even starts to happen before birth, is that we are objectified and placed into categories. We quickly become male and female, white or brown, and then we become quick or slow, smart or dumb, pretty or not, and, of course, countless other things.

The world not only tells us what to be, but it assigns a value to each of those categories and qualities. Few us remember that we are not all of those better and worse things, but that we are pure, radiant, innocent, and beautiful. We believe what we are told about ourselves so much so that we also tell others what they are.

And yet. Some of us suspect otherwise and some of us actively rebel and some of us find, for whatever reason, that the categories and values laid out for us don’t fit so we don’t have a choice but to find another way. Some of us sense within ourselves something precious that wants to be expressed, but we sense it in rather the same way a seed sprouts. Who knows, exactly, what forces and conditions cause a seed to sprout — or not — at any precise moment?

We are gifted with consciousness. We are able to remember the beautiful purity that characterizes who we are, but we do need some sort of inspiration — such as the epiphany I had so many years ago while thinking of my daughter — and then we have to apply ourselves to remembering. Like I said, this kind of truth is easy to forget and hard to remember, especially if you are weighed down with skepticism or, worse, cynicism.

Individual expression and preferences are why we have to explain ourselves — and first know ourselves. Taking the example of the flannel shirt versus the little black dress, it’s important to know what you like, the nature of what you are expressing, and why you are expressing it. It’s important to be real about where you stand in society, and even who might hate you and why, along with the best places to seek love and comfort.

By knowing yourself thoroughly, openly, and lovingly, you can share information about yourself with others, and that becomes the basis for the best kinds of relationships. Your real ground will come from knowing that even things like race and sexual orientation, and especially things like what you like to wear or how much money you make, are superficial expressions of who you are.

-AC

P.S. As a #crazybeautiful bonus, this week I am able to share some gorgeous music from an old friend from high school, Ian Rashkin. I think these tunes, composed by Ian, capture the wonder and melancholy of trying to be who we are. Enjoy a cup of tea and a listen:

Two Works for Solo Violin by Ian Rashkin

Sea Poem. Performed by J.J. Jang.

Melodrama No. 1. Performed by J.J. Jang.

“There but for the grace of God go I.

I’m thinking about Jyoti Singh, known as India’s Daughter as a result of her rape, death, and status as national hero, and I’m hit over and over again with the unwelcome imagining of what it would be like to to be brutally raped to the point that your intestines are falling out and then to have one of your six rapists reach into you and pull them out, separating them from your body and then, while you are alive and conscious, dump you naked in the bushes next to a highway.

In fact, it’s keeping me awake to the point that now, at 3 am, I am finally forced to get out of bed and admit that until I write this down, I will not be able to sleep.

One feeling I’m having is gratitude. I am thankful it wasn’t me. I can feel my own intestines burning and I feel a sense of intactness and relief that I am in bed, alive and, for the moment, safe.

We all know about “man’s inhumanity to man”: We hear about it in the form of slavery, war, mass incarceration, and sexual and domestic violence rates.

As a global community, here’s where we are today:

Slavery

21 million slaves worldwide.

War

500,000 civilian deaths in Iraq.

Mass Incarceration

25% of the world’s incarcerated population (US).

Sexual violence

• 25% of women are raped or sexually assaulted (US).
• 400,000 women per year raped (Congo).

These are the atrocities.

It is our capacity to dehumanize, to experience our fellow human beings as other, that makes atrocities such as the above not only possible, but regular events.

What about the continuum of lesser events that make up our daily lives?

What about the millions who are not slaves, but who work in unsafe and underpaid jobs? Or the difference in employment rates between men and women, white and brown?

What about all the subtle dislocations and violences people live with everyday?

I think of it like this:

• If you’re not white, you’re brown.
• If you’re not straight, you’re gay.
• If you’re poor it’s your fault.
• If you’re rich, you earned it.

It’s also like this:

• White people don’t know they’re white, but they do know you’re brown.
• Straight people don’t know they’re straight, but they do know you’re gay.

If you are gay, brown, or poor, you know that you are gay, brown, or poor, AND you know that the other is straight, white, rich, or all three. One of the problems we face is that privileged people often do not understand the nature and extent of their privilege.

What if straight, white, rich people took a look their status and asked themselves what it means for themselves and for the other?

Not consciously knowing who we are and what that means for us and those around us makes it easier to ignore the dynamics of subtle violences and dislocations. It’s easier, when we haven’t thought it through, to consider ourselves just and justified. If we are willing to consciously consider our status, we can more easily put ourselves in the place of the other.

Until we put ourselves in the place of the other, we can’t really begin to consider the divorces that leave single mothers to fend for themselves in poverty in a country that considers them lazy and morally suspect, if not actual aggressors.

Or what it’s like to know, as a black woman, that you are more likely to be mugged in your lifetime partly because you woke up and your skin was a particular shade of brown.

Or the impact of an unequal access to an education system that makes learning about getting an A so we can succeed, which in our society means to have more.

Having more actually means having more than someone else, and that someone else should be someone who deserves it less. The someone else should be brown, or they should be a woman, or they should be immoral, or they should live far away, picking trash or mining minerals in places we’ve never heard of . . . why?

So the having more doesn’t hurt the ones who have it.

This post was written for you, me, and everyone living together on this earth in honor of Jyoti Singh, Dr. Martin Luther King, whose birthday we’re celebrating this week, and the Dominican friar Xavier Plassat, who lives and works in Brazil, risking his life to end slavery there. The first two heroes were murdered as a result of efforts to live free and make the world a better place. Plassat faces death every day doing the anti-slavery work that he does.

Jyoti Singh fought the odds against women in her country to become a successful medical student, having passed her final exams just before her death in a country that burns women for the crime of being a widow. According to her rapists, she fought to live.

As a result of Jyoti’s life and brutal death, women and men throughout India protested, and put the issue into the public consciousness in a new and powerful way. As a result, rape reporting in India is up 37%.

Dr. King’s achievements are well-known, from his contribution to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965 to the legacy of his beautifully intelligent and prolific writing.

Dr. King’s life and work are celebrated each year at this time, and Jyoti has become, in her own country, a national martyr. Plassat has, over the past 20 years, rescued more than 50,000 people from captivity. All three are known internationally. Together, they inspired me to write this post.

My hope is that we can inspire each other, too, to see the darker truths of the world we live in and to do what we can to recognize within ourselves the ways, subtle and not, that we make the people around us other.

Every generation has its villains, heroes, and martyrs–along with those of us who stand by and hope we can stay out of it. We can’t.

As the world has grown smaller, our web of connection has grown larger and more intricate.

We so often take things that aren’t ours to take. We can learn to look at a thing or a situation and see it for what it is and where it came from, whether it was ripped from the belly of the earth, who ripped it, and why. Our cell phones, for example, are made from a limited supply of minerals extracted from the earth by hands made willing only by force.

When next we switch on a cell phone, we can acknowledge and feel grateful for the 14 year-old black boy who, day after day, worked as a slave 1,000 feet below ground, so we could have more. Surely he, like us, enjoys the sun on his face, a full belly, and falling in love.

The violence and injustice in our world co-exists with illness, old age, and death, along with birth, breaths of fresh air, bodies running free, and proposed cures for cancer. Artwork surrounds us. Beautiful people and things are everywhere.

Atrocity walks hand-in-hand with heroism on one side and apathy on the other. Life marches on, unstoppable in its quest for itself. The truth is that, as humans, each of us is subject to every form of human suffering. Not one of us is immune.

The facts I’ve shared here have reasons that will be interpreted differently according to character and political orientation. I really don’t know what you should do about the world’s problems as they stand today, or if there is anything you can do about it, given your circumstances.

This post is not a call to action, it is a call for wide-eyed reflection.

-AC

Resources:

Watch India’s Daughter

Read this article about the modern day slave trade.

Listen to this song and read the YouTube comments:

I accomplished a lot in 2015 and got a lot of what I wanted. It felt really good–for a minute.

Then I felt the inevitable crash that comes after effort spent, leaving me with post-Christmas pine needles to sweep up, trash to be stuffed into overflowing bins, and bills to be paid.

The problem is, everything is impermanent, including positive feelings about accomplishments. This can be understood through a physiological filter: we get a little hit of endorphins, which gives us a high, every time something we think is good happens.

Like drinking, making love, going shopping, or any other experience, the positive emotions associated with the activity last only so long and then we want–or crave–more.

Feeling good becomes chasing experiences and their resulting feelings in order to avoid other feelings, such as the reality that we are born, we struggle to stay alive, and then we die.

We are animals. Our basic purpose is to survive, which we will fail to do. That’s it.

As humans, we have an added burden that we can reflect on our aliveness, and see it for what it is. What is it? Nothing.

We hit home runs, fall in love, invent Facebook, and try to get through day with grace only to press repeat.

And yet.

We can elevate this.

How?

Try augmenting your efforts with observation.

Go slow. Use all your senses, minute-by-minute, second-by-second, to sense yourself and the world around you.

The only way out is in.

–AC