“It is very important to me that my ideas be understood. It is not as important that I be understood” - Gil Scott-Heron
What I find immensely frustrating is people missing my point then hyper-focusing on that missed point. That reeks of disrespect during what would otherwise be meaningful exchanges, my friend.
Perhaps my short height beacons like a call for help hence all men within range clamor over themselves to give me advice and talk down to me. If height was indeed proportional to competence, then I’m afraid to inform many of you of your severe underperformance.
I wonder if it is the envy of liberation, intellectual freedom, artistic authenticity or spiritual maturity that disturbs others enough to lecture without prompt, impose narrow perspectives and dead ideologies, and project immature insecurities.
They are anxious about my behaviors and motivations. They endure shame and fear - on my behalf - over my thoughts and actions. The Eyes linger on my work for cracks to pour unwanted opinion into.
And in this way, they undermine my discipline, craft and growth. They trigger violent responses by insulting my intelligence. They impede a walk that which is my birthright. While they do not, cannot, know my pain, grief and trauma; my history, my burdens. Neither my ecstasy, imagination nor cunning.
My motivations of love and excellence appear strange to them, foreign. Victory does not seem to be a language they know how to speak. They cannot decouple ego from greater-good. Thus they pigeonhole people, attempting to quantity them in measures of subjective ignorance and unresolved neuroses.
This sickens me. I can feel myself being forced in the three or four boxes people have for other people (in relation to themselves); my complex, multi-faceted soul forced into limiting social spaces triggering a spiritual asthma to match my literal condition. I resist and detest this cultural assault. I push back their rush and closed-mindedness.
My mind is my great asset. I value my experience, intuition and hard-won wisdom. It is fair of me to ask, quid pro quo, for others not to undermine my intelligence and rather to bear witness to its complementary, ever-evolving commitment to discipleship and awareness. Plus my relentless ability to reflect, relate and roll-forward. Appreciate my humility and take my support, freely given.
Perhaps you cannot see these things because they are not in you.
The greatest victim in all this is my own remarkable recovery; the grace of all those wonderful souls who exercised compassion towards me, whose collective efforts built me up while - it often felt like - every cruel force in this world was upon those I love.
God and his lessons through the prophets and apostles. Body after body. Lesson after lesson.
Why sully remarkable testimony to the resilience and power of humanity with misunderstanding and unsolicited judgement?
Were you present when grief tore me to shreds and madness beckoned like siren song at the feet of my dead father? Do you know my longing for peace? The women and children I have lifted on my shoulders through torment after torment? My tears in front of the landlord’s mango tree on Christmas. Or New Years, I struggle to remember.
The debt this ugly society puts on a young person’s heart and future is enormous: it should be a great shame; perhaps we feel it and pay for it through our toxicity, now even an inability to breed (no offence).
Then society demands they work with profound heaviness, then mocks them when they struggle, their own children and legacy.
Young men should not behave like the old men whose epoch is scarred by impatience, selfishness and greed. We can be better than them. Listen, learn, make new paths, chart new courses. Old ways failed. Let us try to develop competent leadership.
How nicely described it is in Moana 2 that “wayfinding” is about finding ways where there are none.
Humans are afflicted with this sort of reflexive self-gaslighting, for lack of a better phrase - “shit-eating” - mechanism constantly pressuring them to revert to orthodoxy and surrender to status quo, the safety of patriarchal paternalism. Why sing songs, read stories, pray in the temple if you have no intention, desire or plan to “worship in Spirt and in truth”?
That, to me, is crazy.
Strive to kill the nonparticipant inside yourself caging others with overlooked personal defeat. You can also stay out of the way.
“Physician, Heal Thyself.”