When Your Platform is Smaller Than a Soapbox....

...but you feel compelled to climb on top of it and use it in some small way to express outrage and complete dejection at - well, everything that is going on.

To say things are f*cked up is a serious understatement. 

I will not attempt to list the ways in which the awfulness is manifesting - there's no way I could sum it all up properly and I'm sure I'd be leaving something off the list inadvertently. 

Suffice it to say, the overwhelm is real even for me in full acknowledgement of my position in society.

It is difficult to know where to put my attention. How to make a difference. Where do I even begin to process everything? I attempted to do the very least I could - with so-called hashtag activism on Black Out Tuesday. And I did it wrong. Managing to upset people that I love and looking foolish in the process. Go me.

In my rush to join in the movement, I forgot to take a moment to consider what was the best way to join in. As trite as it may sound, I forgot to breathe. 

Certainly the breath and the ability to breathe freely is front of mind for most people. We know it as an outcry from the dying George Floyd and Eric Garner. I am fully aware of my position as one who can do the simple yet life-sustaining act of inhaling and exhaling at will every day of my life.

The beginning of any task for me is my breath. I got a reminder of why this is as I re-listened to a podcast snippet of another podcast produced by the On Being project called Becoming Wise. I was desperate for the sound of rational and caring humans and this podcast delivered.

The episode from July of 2016 entitled, "Trauma and Resilience Land in Our Bodies" with psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk delivered the salve of a wise person sharing how foundational our breath is and how it can "go awry when you are terrified".

It is very important for those of us outside the black and brown community to help our fellow humans breathe. In the literal sense, it can help someone feeling traumatized by everything around them decompress, de-stress and reset. So too, a "literal breath assist" might provide the pause a person needs to realize they now have better information about a subject and can therefore take better action.

 

Pausing to breathe can never harm or worsen a situation.  

Speaking figuratively - the take a breath - take a pause idea gives someone else a chance to speak. I don't need to be the one giving the lecture, not only because my soapbox is so small - but because I need to listen. Where I can help is (figuratively) seated alongside the ones whose turn it is to speak, and I'll be reminding them to breathe.