A powerful lesson.
A few years back, I participated in a small group discussion with a diverse group of strangers. At one point, I made a remark about overcoming the brutality of polarizing politics and leading from where we stood. Within seconds, I felt the petite black woman next to me bristle. “Easy for you to say. You know nothing about structural racism.” She turned away from me.
I wanted the floor to swallow me. I was stunned into silence. Heart racing, embarrassed, and completely naked in my ignorance. I tried for something, anything, that would help me understand my mistake. I fell short. My body reacted to this stress with an overwhelming urge to fight back.
Instead, praise be, I reached for a miracle micro-tool, forbidding myself to utter a word until I had taken three full, deep breaths. I forced myself to be still, listen, stay open. By then, I had been practicing mindfulness for years and knew to not heed the command of the angry reptile brain. At some point, I was calm enough to re-join the conversation and more carefully make my comment. Then, nervously, I asked the woman to help me understand. She met my gaze and said, not unkindly, “That’s not my job.” And she left. Others told me it just gets so tiring explaining obvious things to clueless people. (I said “clueless.” They didn’t.)
That day, I learned hard lessons about race, my ignorance, and the way I had been walking through the world for half a century without any sense of my “privilege.” I had never even heard someone use the words “structural racism.” My friends will tell you I read voraciously, but I realized I had a blindspot a mile wide when it came to really understanding experiences so different from mine. How must it have felt, listening to history lessons that omitted the ominous structures of injustice that have been fortified over and over in the years since “emancipation?” I remember Mr. Jensen reading the inscription on the Statue of Liberty to my 8th grade class and feeling so proud to be an American... “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Today, that inscription makes me hurt for my friend, whose childhood was marked by the fact that his father came here looking for work more than 30 years ago. Last year, after nearly a decade trying to fill out the right paperwork to become a citizen, he was deported to Mexico City.
Most of our nation is filled with unrest, and sleep won’t come until we get serious about the divides that suffocate awareness of our shared humanity. Lots of us have said at one point or another, “It’s not my fault,” or “We should move on.” But I’d like us to consider another path. What if we committed to hold ourselves to account for what we could better understand? What if instead of statements like, “It’s not my fault,” we ask questions like, “What could I understand better?”
The breath is so powerful. We know paying attention to breath is good for us. And whether we pay attention to it or not, it happens. We take it in. We breathe it out, barely stopping to notice that it’s crisp, clear mountain air. We go on to the next one.
Communities across the nation, including all over Wyoming, have risen up in the wake of something tragic. My mental practice of paying attention to breath suddenly has such a different context. Something so many of us take for granted -- breath -- was crushed out of one man under the knee of another, while still others watched. “I can’t breathe,” were some of George Floyd’s last words. As I practice mindful breathing each morning, my thoughts go quickly from the breath I have to the breath George Floyd doesn’t. I can scarcely fathom the pain and fear in his mind as he lost consciousness and life.
This week, try turning your breath into a tool. Let it give you the power to respond instead of react. We’ve offered a few resources below, including a few things we’re reading and watching.
With great love and care,
Sara and the Becoming Jackson Whole Team
This week’s pocket practice: Responding instead of Reacting
Notice a moment of tension, embarrassment, anger.
Before you react, take three deep breaths (about 45 seconds).
Breathe in — with appreciation for simple breath.
Breathe out — with an intention to better understand.
This week’s guided meditation: Three Breaths to Let Go
For a little deeper dive . . .
We’re reading law professor Rhonda Magee’s The Inner Work of Racial Justice. Click HERE for an excerpt.
We’re watching Just Mercy, a beautiful film about the life’s work of civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson. Right now, it’s available to stream for free.