I keep thinking about this…dream, or vision, or whatever, I had about two or three years ago. I remember sitting on my porch, it was a beautiful summer day, and I was listening to some blues and smoking a joint.
I could almost hear the sounds of the enslaved Americans in the fields, I could almost smell the cotton in the air, I could almost feel the sweat dripping down my poor aching back as I found myself feeling like I was standing there among my ancestors.
I am not American, but my people hail from Jamaica, which means that the American men and women and children who were enslaved were my cousins, and I will never forget that.
When George Floyd died, when I saw the video against my will, by binge watching CNN, I realized that I needed more Black people in my world, even if that meant just online. Even if that meant just in Facebook groups and chatrooms, because I was drowning in a sea of whiteness, and I honestly didn’t feel like I could breath.
I think back to that dream or vision that I had all those years ago a lot. Largely because they existed in a world that treated them as if they didn’t have a right to, and in the process of their evolution from alive to dead to whatever comes next, I had the privilege of coming after them.
Normalize realizing that millions of billions of trillions of tiny well timed events had to happen for your ass to exist in the place that is reading THIS post at THIS precise exact moment.
Just think about the vastness of the universe, and all the amazing things that we have yet to discover, yet to accomplish, yet to attempt, before we are ready to say that we are experts on anything.
When my grandfather died I remember thinking that he was going to leave me with some piece of wisdom, some piece of knowledge about how I had everything to live for, instead his last words to me were “see you later kid.” He was on the phone and barely noticed that I had left the room, and a few days later, he was gone.
My grandfather was a white man, who wasn’t always as nice to me as he should have been, but the one thing that he absolutely taught me is that it doesn’t matter how terrible treat you, what matters is what you do to them in response.
The fact that Black Americans haven’t outright revolted against the American population right now is fucking outstanding, because they would absolutely win in a fair fight. The problem however is that those who are trying to tear you down are not going to fight fair. They aren’t going to follow the rules and they aren’t going to be nice about trying to tear you down.
Michelle Obama says that when they go low, we go high, and yeah sometimes that works, but sometimes punching a bitch square in the nose will do the trick too. I’ve had someone do that to me, she punched me in the face and was surprised when I just stared at her without flinching.
I didn’t care that she’d punched me in the face, because I wasn’t interested in fighting her, I had about fifty pounds on her, and frankly I am not a fighter, I hate confrontation of all forms, but what I learned is that I can take a punch and remain standing. That’s an important lesson, it means that I can’t be knocked down easily.
It takes a lot for people to get me to the place where I am crying and feeling low about myself, it takes a lot of me giving up on myself. Sometimes it’s just easier to cry it out then deal with it, until I realize that crying it out means that I am releasing, letting go, and making space for the new.
When I think about everything that the people came before me experienced and suffered through, the more that I realize that their blood runs in my veins. Their blood courses through my heart and into my mind, and the secrets of their ability to survive is encoded in the dna of my bones.
Scientists say that the experiences of trauma we face every day, can be passed down from mother to child, mathematics say that what you do to one side you must do to the other, so logically that means that not only are we passing down our trauma we’re also passing down our strengths.
My mother is a white English, Irish, Scottish, Roma woman, my father is a Black Jamaican man, which means that my mom’s ancestors at one point may have owned my fathers ancestors, which means that the universe was designed so that we would mix our races, whatever the cost.
The universe demands unity, and it will fight for that unity by any means necessary, you can either be a part of the flow, or you can go against it as Shane used to say, but whatever decision you make is going to have consequences.
Those choices are also going to come with blessings too though, they are going to come with people who care enough about you to force you to share your story enough times that it starts to matter to those who hear it. There are going to be those who will lift you up when you fall, and keep your secrets when you need them too.
You just have to find your tribe. I genuinely believe that our DNA is encoded to lead us to those who we are connected to on a supernatural almost basis, I think that we are destined to find exactly the right people at exactly the right time, if we want to.
If you’re out there and you are reading this, think about all the places in the world that you want to go, think about all the things that you want to do, and do whatever you can to get there, even if it means diverting from your original track.
Even if it means doing things out of order, and even if it looks messy to the other people in your life. Live in truth, and remember those who came before you. If you’re dreaming of them, I promise they were dreaming of you too.
Sending all my love,
Devon J Hall
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