We live in a world where everyone is quick to tell you to get over your past. It’s done.
Yeah like it’s that easy!
As individuals we are expected by society to be an example and to always put up a good façade. They often expect from us what we do not have. Yet society does not make itself an example.
This is February, Black History Month, where we are bombarded by the trials and tribulations of our blackness. We regurgitate unceasingly all the travails of slavery and the ugliness which persists to this day, one hundred and seventy-nine years after emancipation, which never fails to evince hidden feelings of unworthiness, bitterness and disgust; even hatred for the people who created the series of events that seemingly caused an entire race to endure.
These feelings have the ability to throw us into despair if we do not hold onto every ounce of positivity that we somehow manage to have; as if by holding on to the negative we can in some way soothe the distant cries of our ancestors and calm their souls by reliving the events that made up their lives.
These cries are only alive in our hearts and our heads because those souls have gone back to God, where they are no longer experiencing the human condition if we are to believe we are souls having a human experience.
Instead of focusing on all the hurt, pain and dehumanizing way of slavery, we need to focus on creating better situations so that we never again find ourselves in such a place where slavery would find root and re-evolve.
In the same way, in our personal lives when we find ourselves to be survivors of childhood abuse and neglect, we need to create a place for our offspring where they can flourish and ensure that our history is not repeated in their lives.
We might never forget what was done to us, but we need to remember enough so that our children do not endure what we went through, because our spirit still lives and it is how they live that is going to help determine the healing we desire.
It is just as difficult for an individual to forget the negative episodes in his or her life, just as much as it is for an entire race.
Some wise person once said that we have to be careful to whom we entrust our story, and that is true. There are those who have a tendency to ridicule even when their story is not that different but we cannot wallow in regret because being betrayed is not your issue, you just need to find a different medium to relate your story and take it out of the confines of your mind.
It has been said by people I am guided by that it really is not your business how people feel about you, but you need to be more mindful of how you feel about you.
After all we all have our own special set of circumstances that create the experience that is our life and it is nobody’s business to tell you how to feel.
Isn’t ironic though that Valentine’s Day falls in the middle of this!