In fact, when I had to study her through my lit classes in college, she formed half the dastardly duo that moved me from wanting to major in English to Humanities. (Kate Chopin is the other offender.)
But for all that I hate 99% of her work and dismiss it as trite, she did have the gift of words that linger in the mind- even mine. Today, those words are as follows-
“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all.”
Let me be a thousand and one percent clear here… what we got today isn’t justice. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a step, and an important one. But how can we forget that while George Floyd’s murderer will be behind bars tonight, Adam Toledo’s walks free? The blue wall hasn’t come down, and we haven’t addressed the real issue here. It’s not civilians versus cops or gun control or what Maxine Water or Marjorie Taylor Green said about any of it.
When you clear away all the noise, the issue is this- there is something inherently wrong with the idea of one person having the power of life and death over another… and we, as a society, pretend that it is inevitable and allow it to exist with minimal to no checks and balances of that power.
Big leap of logic, I know, but walk with me a sec. There’s three main pillars that I can think of in which this power exists- law enforcement is the easy one. Then there’s the medical profession, which has a system of checks (and malpractice insurance, which is a different system of checks) and balances with licensing and revocation of licensing in extreme circumstances. And so we feel secure in that system… though a lot of me thinks that’s because we don’t really have a whole lot of alternatives.
The last one? Parenting.
Did you feel that chill? Shit just got real, yeah? Because if you are a parent, you just felt the weight of that responsibility all over again.. and if you have parents that maybe didn’t use that power in the best ways, you just admitted to yourself that you’re sitting in your chair reading this trivial little blog of mine by luck.
In my heart of hearts, I don’t believe we should have this kind of power over one another- and if I’m being perfectly honest, I’m a little in fear of the mentality that would seek it out on purpose. Living in our society, I don’t see how not having this imbalance is avoidable. But I started off this little posting talking about hope- so here’s where that ties in. In this moment in time, when we seem to be more ready than we’ve ever been to admit that our society has problems, I hope that we find a kernel of something better in ourselves. I hope we have the conversations about being better without defensiveness, without dragging our feet- because in those conversations comes the admission that we all deserve something better and brighter. And set about to achieve it, understanding there are wonders enough for all of us to have something bright and beautiful in our world.
Curiouser and Curiouser 