MORNING MEDITATION

I awakened this morning in prayer and meditation, really thinking about how irritated and upset I got yesterday. I usually let it slide. I usually just roll my eyes and let it roll off my back. I usually don't let it get to me. I usually try to continue to lovingly engage and stay on task. I usually don't "stoop to the level" (to use the antagonist's words). Usually. Yesterday was not "usual." Yesterday I was just tired of the way people act as if folk who have degrees also have no feelings or humanity. Sick of it. And really: most of the scholar-activists I know are NOT maternalistic/paternalistic. They are (many of them) one or two degrees or jobs away from the 'hood. Most of the ones I know are fierce and still deeply connected with their cousins and kin who don't have education. We still code switch. We still wobble with it and I suppose some people twerk (can't get with you there). Yeah, I know. People like the trope that people have education, but no common sense. But really, your one or two exception does not a class of people make. I know mighty few educated fools with no common sense. Mighty few, especially among Blacks who've come by way of people selling chicken dinners to help them through college. You can't be in academia and last as a fool. It's dangerous water for people of color, even in historically HBCUs. But I don't like anyone being picked on which is why I rarely (not perfect, here) laugh at jokes told at others' expense. Yesterday found me at the nexus of frustration. So I woke up praying for me and all the people I know who suffer this foolishness on a regular basis. I also prayed for the people who perpetrate it. I wonder if it's possible to have a community of wolf-lamb laying down (and I am not presuming who is the wolf or who's the lamb in that statement). I'm smarter than a lot of people about a lot of things. But gangstas taught me the streets and how to survive if necessary. I'm not a doctor of medicine, so don't expect a diagnosis of that sort. All of that to say, I do repent only for the "I'm smarter than you" statement. We all have our smarts... (though some 'smarts' are more destructive than others from where I sit). I enter this day with the words of an Elder/Sage on my heart. She sent them to me just as I came up from meditation. She said: "I learned a long time ago not to fight with bitter, angry, evil, ignorant, otherwise ugly people because they have nothing to lose. Some peoples' head is a pit full of snakes, worms, lizards, and other creepy things. I love [them] but I don't let them get close to me." Those words have given me life today.

© Valerie Bridgeman
June 28, 2013