At the Risk of Seeming Esoteric... Well You Gotta Start Somewhere.

As I am sitting with a few minutes to share all that is swirling in my mind, I can't help but to share some thoughts and questions I have been and am currently struggling with. I would like to start off with a question about the definition of free. What does it mean to be truly free? Is this an ideal that we grow up assuming we have? Is it given by someone to another person? If it is, how can we ever truly be free? How does one know the opportunities that this 'freedom' allows them if they have been socialized into thinking there really isn't anything they have domain and power over? One of my biggest questions is how does one go about unlearning the things that are as implicit as breathing?

Swirling... swirling in my mind...

I can't help but apply an internal locus to all of my faults and an external locus to all of my success. I can't be as smart as people tell me. I knew the right people, spent enough time in the right circles. I can't really encompass all these amazing things people claim they know I have. Oh, but I KNOW I am stubborn, I am grouchy in the morning. I know I am volatile during my period. I know that I have commitment and trust issues. That's ALL me. With all of this literature I have been exposed to, I can't help but see the connection to this socially constructed norm and tendency. Is it a gender thing? A race thing? A class thing? I am led to believe it's ALL of that in a heaped together intermeshed sort of way. A passion in my life is to show others how this is happening ALL the time. This indoctrination to social norms, a tacit submission to the system we have all helped establish and to flourish.

Behaviors, Thoughts, & Deed...

This system, OUR system. I can no longer disassociate myself from a system that I perpetuate and tacitly, and consciously support.

Pain
Power
Vengeance
Energy
Triumph
Assimilation
Freedom

All these things raw, uncut, words on a page. What does this all mean? Where do we go from here? What can I do? This. I will think critically. I will write. I will engage. I will be involved.

We only live once (contrary to popular belief) and I want and will try to do WHATEVER I can logically, morally, passionately, energetically to make myself heard, read, understood. I want to help people see what I see, and learn from others to see the things I have yet to really understand. I have already begun this exploration, this peregrination of sorts.

I will end with a quote from bell hooks:

"If I do not speak in a language that can be understood there is little chance for a dialogue."

-Desi