Liberat.es
Surprising myself
The following is a lightly edited version of a voice memo I made to myself on a walk yesterday. I’m finding it point me in the direction that I think some of my work — including what’s in this space — is going.
The heart of things is that I i’m interested in being the most authentic, free, and creative version of myself that I can possibly be. I think that’s a goal for all of us on some level, and it’s the space in which I want to work and want to play with. I want to find a way to liberate myself — I can feel the tears into the surface when I say that — As a means of doing what I can, playing some small role in helping liberate others so that something real, something authentic, something meaningful can unfold in our lives.
There is an awful lot of energy I noticed that gets put into the basic questions of life. What I mean by that is how we survive; how do we subsist in this world that is becoming harder and harder to survive in. Both from a moral and ethical standpoint, but also at the ground keeping a roof over our heads, getting ourselves with the food that we need and the fuel for the warmth. And then there are the other foundational things such as the care and the love that we require — things that are rarely talked about as the needs of everyday folks.
We are surrounded by food deserts. This is a documented phenomenon and something that a lot of folks are writing about doing things about. There’s a lot of organizing happening around this. We’re also surrounded by connection deserts. We are becoming more and more isolated and buying more and more into the idea that somehow that’s our fault. It’s not our fault. It’s a product of the systems that surround us. These deserts — and the systems that create them — get in the way of our freedom. They get in the way of our creativity; in the way of our authentic being. The layers of oppression of the systems of oppression that play a role in this are massive. Economic oppression, racial opression, gender opression, and on, and on.
The ways that our energy is drained towards this need to do this basic human thing, this basic mammalian thing, this basic being alive thing of living, is greatly detracting from our capacity to be creative, wild, free, deeply meaningful, and deeply spiritual beings. There’s a uniqueness to the quality of consciousness that comes through being a human. This is certainly a human centric perspective. And yet, there is something different about us — that that that in itself is undeniable. Different from the other forms of life that have emerged here an our little corner of this universe.
So what does that mean? What is our role? What is our *obligation? Our responsibility to that? These are the kinds of questions that are emerging for me as I explore this generative space. This is a part of how I want anti-oppression work to move through me. How do we — as a means of responsibility — create space for everyone to dip more deeply into our shared humanity? How do we do it through the lenses of the systems that have elevated some of us, and oppressed others? How do we do it with care and love?
These are the questions that are surprising me right now.