fight or flight

generally speaking, i think our most primitive reactions are of little use to us. evolution required us to need to be able to do things to survive that most (not all) of us don’t need to do anymore.

however, after living through yesterday, all i can think about is fight or flight.

on one hand, obviously, this is my country and fighting for it seems like an obvious choice. america is the only home i have ever known (even if my ancestors were almost definitely dragged here against their will).

one of my favorite quotes goes something like “you can’t truly change something unless you see yourself as a part of it.” so, here i am, an american citizen, and i should fight for this country to be what i know it says it can be, what it’s founding documents say it wants to be, but isn’t yet.

but then on the other hand, i’m like… fuck it. this country has perpetually treated the slave, the foreigner, the outsider, like shit. why stick around in a place that is so systemically unwelcome?

not only that, but some of us are more vulnerable than others. straight, white, cis-gendered men, regardless of where they stand, aren’t likely to have physical attacks on them go up over the next four years. sure, many attacks on them continue (because almost all violent crime is committed by and against people of the same race), but that’s not what i’m worried about.

what i’m worried about is being targeted as a queer, black man. i still have all sorts of privilege (cis-gendered, educational privilege), but all it takes is one person with a bullet and a gun to end me and right now, people who don’t like black people are feeling real bold.

yesterday, a friend posted this on facebook:

“‘we’re about to own you again.’

This was said to my black boyfriend as he left a business meeting last night.”

over the last many months, i have developed much stronger connections to the jewish community in boston. the shared histories of oppression between jewish people and black people (though there are some important differences) is something that often makes me remember that cross-boundary organizing is possible and necessary. but i can’t help but think about all the stories i’ve read and heard, in books, movies, and from peoples’ mouths. the “why didn’t they just leave earlier?"s and the "we knew it was crazy, but we just didn’t know how crazy it really was until it was too late"s and the "fighting was important, but now that entire branch of my family is gone"s and the "i wish they had just fled and lived to fight another day"s.

when is too much? when is too late? will i regret the moment(s) i had to get out and prepare safe spaces for family and friends?

i’m real torn, right now. america is all i’ve ever known and, on good days, i can genuinely imaging dying to make it the place it could be, not for its own sake, but for the sake of other humans, for the sake of people who shouldn’t have to die because of who they are. if we can’t figure this out in america, it’s not clear to me it can be done anywhere. i did used to always say that if i hadn’t found a cause to die for by the age Jesus died, i was doing something wrong. 

but still, is it worth my life? is it worth bashing myself against the rocks for something that was potentially well-intended, but rotten from the start? this land is stolen and we scarcely acknowledge it. black people, women, brown people, queer people, forever, have been told systemically and literally that they/we don’t matter. who wants to stay around to fix a system that tells you you don’t matter, that your life is worth less?

feeling real torn.

9 november 2016

today, i cried twice before sunrise. 

ross says writing helps.
so i write.

manny, nene, anna, and erin inspire.

last night, i put my head in the sand.
kept it there until 7am.
intentionally.

six months ago, i planned to be in montréal for the election.
i knew it could happen. 
some people pretend to not know what america is.
some people actually do not know what america is. 
non-americans know what america is. 
black people know what america is. 
brown people know.
women know. 
trans people know. 
non-binary people know. 
native people know. 

some people do not know. 

i call nse. 
we talk about the sadness and the fear.
and then we talk about work.

“keep building, keep pushing, love on each other.”

i check facebook incessantly. 
i start a running file of everyone’s statuses.
watching the waves.

i avoid twitter. 
it gets in anyways. 

jason tells me a group of kkk members was spotted this morning on a bridge in north carolina. 

this is america. in 2016. the fucking kkk. 

i heard from chuck that people i know and love (loved? love.) voted trump.
attempted to convince others to vote trump. to vote hate. 
i left florida for this. 

now i sit outside america. 
wondering.

do i go back? 
i must.
musn’t i?

i can’t go on.
i must go on. 

soup poop.
just now. 
i wrote a 30 word email.
in 30 minutes.

the sun shines. 
but i don’t understand. 

how? 

abe says trump is the final boss. 

the empire is falling.
it does not look like i thought it would. 

my stomach hurts.
my fingers twitch. 

i oscillate between anger, sadness, fear…
and excitement. 

maybe we have to do this now. 

the civil rights moved us down the field.
but we’re not done yet. 

this is america. 

i meet ambroise’s brother for coffee.
we hope. laugh. dream. 

we can still learn.
even through this.

i am reminded that we have always rejected our parents’ systems. 
they believed the government would fix things.
they made it strong. er.
we disbelieve. 
so now we must work.

“forward ever, backward never.”

oops?

barack obama. 
donald trump.
same system. 

how?

the “great” american experiment. 

he lost the popular vote.
electoral college pulls him through.

it’s all stolen.
dreams.
fairy dust. 
lies. 

and yet…
there are no demons. they are not demons.

hate will not solve this.
the fear that put him in office is real.
from where did it come? 

pushback.
backlash.
blacklash.
invisibility. 

texts roll in:
i love you.
i love you, too.
we should’ve gotten married when we could.
we should still get married.
i need a hug. 
don’t come back.
come back.

what is the future now?
everything i wished for is thrown off course.
my dreams, my work, my energy, my time. 
what will it look like?
who knows. 

what now? 

who knows.  

will i regret writing this? no. 
will i regret making it public? maybe.

who knows.

soundtrack: laura mvula. 

i have cried 4x today. it’s not even 1pm.

coupling off over time: good or bad? necessary or not?

i touched on this the other day, but my friend, miriam, made a really good point in a conversation we had last week.

her point was that as people get older, they tend to couple off. this thends to shift the locus of their decision-making. people go from prioritizing their friends and community to prioritizing their romantic relationship. 

now, for her i think the emphasis was on the increasing importance of maintaining strong friendships in the face of diminishing connection with people who were previously close friends. for me, though, the shift from outward to inward focus on relationships is where her insight takes me…

now, as a single person, my gut reaction is against this transition. i can’t even remember how many people i once considered good friends that i literally never see anymore. well, except for when they post pictures of them and their spouse and their children on instagram.

if i take a step back, though, two things come up for me. first, is the shift from outward to inward necessary? i think not. i think the patriarchal model of nuclear household that we have in the west makes this so. the goal of buying a residence and living there with just you, your spouse, and your kids, makes the inward focus for a relationship seem natural. but i don’t think it is. in fact, i think it’s really destructive, mostly because it’s not resilient. people of past times raised their families in robust, interconnected communities. extended famiiles lived near each and also local community was much more important (because travel and moving far from home wasn’t really a thing like it is now). i could go on…

the second is, whether or not the shift is necessary, is it bad? i think so. one of the major pitfalls i see people falling into literally all the time is expecting their primary romantic interest to be their all. it’s a secretly insidious trend, in my opinion. as our society modernizes, we search for more and more from our primary partners. we want physical, mental, emotional, friend, family, and career support all from the same person. what’s crazy is that we don’t even hold our friends to those standards. we know that some friends meet some types of needs for us and other friends meet other needs. so we put all this expectation into our primary relationship which can have all sorts of negative consequences. codependence is one of them, but also when things go bad or wrong in that relationship, we have almost no resilience because all the energy has been going into one place.

i’m convinced that this is a piece of why modern dating is so bad. i’m also convinced that this is a part of why divorces are so ugly. it’s not just ending a relationship, it’s ending like 8 relationships simultaneously and it’s even harder because strongly-bound couples under-invest in the other relationships in their lives that could help them weather the turmoil of a breakup.

the paradoxical role of failure in self-driven change

a friend of mine had this insight during our last productivity coaching session:

“the feeling of failure undermines progress, but failure itself is part of the process.” - miriam mack

failure is a tricky thing. many people these days are talking about failure. some of them discuss how failing is an important part of entrepreneurship. others talk about failing small and failing fast as a way to learn. in the case of productivity work, failure plays somewhat of a paradoxical role.

on one hand, failure is a part of the process. any self-driven learning is going to include some failure. i mean, i guess it’s possible that someone wanting to change their life could start and be perfect at it. but i’ve yet to see that happen. so far, my experience is that failure happens because change is hard. the trick is to keep at it. over time, the new practice or habit will stick and eventually it will become more natural than not to do it. that’s where the long-term changes come from.

on the other hand, the feeling of failure is detrimental. it undermines progress. it sets of chemical reactions in your brain that make you want to give up. this reaction is so powerful that self-help experts all over will explain how and why to set yourself up for success. i tell people all the time that done is better than perfect and to set rewards for yourself that encourage your success.

so failure is both a part of the process of change and it’s important to acknowledge that it will happen. it’s also important to minimize the feeling of failure because it undermines your drive to keep trying.

this is tricky thing, but it seems possible to work through the paradox. i’ve done it myself and i see and support other to people do it all the time (my friend, erin, for example…).

relationship capacity: friends, family, and the transition as we couple off

last week ross and i had a really interesting conversation about relationships that are important in our lives.

ross puts a really high priority on spending time with his family. i won’t go into the details because that’s their business, but he spends a lot of time with them. from my perspective, he spends time with them individually and collectively, pretty much every week. it helps that they live nearby.

i, on the other hand, i spend a similar amount of energy into my friends, especially my inner friend circle. depending on our schedules, i have 3-5 friends who i try to spend a significant chunk of time with (60-90 minutes at least) every other week. those relationships are really important to me for many reasons, but that’s not what this post is about. my family also lives over 1,400 miles away.

the conversation ross and i had was that, like in many other ways, we’re opposites. the time and energy he spends with his family i spend with my close friends. maybe it’s a capacity thing: we both have a maximum amount of relational capacity and we just utilize it in different relationship spheres.

the plot thickened when i had a conversation with my friend miriam about her perception of relationships as people age. basically, her point was that intimate friendships become increasingly important as more and more friends couple off and settle down.

that’s when i thought that maybe the coupling off stage is when people transition from friends taking up their primary relationship capacity to family taking it up. in ross’ words “when you ask a friend to get drinks, ‘sure’ turns into ‘lemme ask the boss [spouse].’”

in some ways, this isn’t new or surprising. it’s definitely not bad (necessarily). i guess i’m curious about if the transition is inevitable… and what does it mean for those folks (of whom there are more and more of these days) who want to stay single for a long time? are they destined to have fewer close friends over time?