“You have incredible skin!”

I’m at an outdoor mall in California with my sister. A random white lady walks up to us. She tells us we have “great skin”. The lady disappears into the masses. 

I bristle. 

I start to mutter about microaggressions, hostility, and racism. I turn to look at my sister. Rhea is beaming.

“Hey, I’ll take it!”

When we were teenagers, Rhea had a lot of acne. Her acne got a lot of unwanted attention. Well-meaning family relatives would buy special creams and lotions for her face without her ever asking for it. Attendants in pharmacies would come up to Rhea asking: “Do you need something for your skin, Ma’am?”  

Now, Rhea is all smiles. 

“Hey, I’m taking it! No one tells me I got great skin – that random white lady wants to tell me that…well, I’m taking it.”

Rhea continues walking. A smile on her face and a skip in her step.

2. “He’s on his way. His journey is long.”

This is what my sister says to me after I explain the nuances of another racially charged situation I’m navigating. 

I’m waving my hands. Gesticulating wildly, my eyes bulging and voice impassioned. 

I’ve spent the last twenty minutes unpacking how a comment a man made to me was irksome. I explained the colonialist, imperialist, and sexist overtones and undertones. I’m exhausted sharing my frustration with a man who can’t seem to gauge any of the nuances of the situation. I end with: 

“He. Is. Wrong.” 

On hearing it all – Rhea is smiling that smile again:

He is on his way and his journey is long. He may never get there.

She tells me, I have high standards for people’s cultural awareness.

The majority of us aren’t quite there yet. 

I’m taken aback. 

*

Being WOKE is exhausting and confusing

As I awaken to the wicked ways of man, I get angrier and angrier. The more I learn and unlearn… well the more I feel. And sometimes… it can be too much. 

The need for justice feels urgent, frustrating, and demoralizing.

It is exhausting.

This angry awareness depletes me AND it puts me on the offensive. The more I learn, the more I look for evidence in the real world. I walk around with hypervigilance just waiting to find a moment when someone is going to slip up. Then… I can yell out loud – “Aha! And there it is again! Covert racism! AGAIN” 

More often than not, I don’t need to look too hard. The hard truth is that the world is filled with a lot of pain, trauma, and abusive power.  

BUT – what is all this anger and awareness doing to me? 

If my emotional, mental and spiritual health is out of balance – what good am I to anything or anybody in the world? 

Who do I help or lift up by becoming consumed by this injustice?

Woke Anger is Important and Necessary

Anger is also a ticking time bomb. If you don’t process it …anger lingers. 

I recognize each person has their own way of processing and expressing rage. 

But I do wonder and worry about Rhea’s pacifist tendencies. Is she really okay with it? Or is it bottled within? 

By acknowledging our anger, we honor the FULLNESS of our own humanity. (Sidenote – so much of this is influenced by one of my fav reads from 2021 – Rage Becomes Her). 

So here is the thing:

Anger is NOT the same as action. 

AND

Anger does need to be felt and moved through you. 

Anger is a gift. Expressing and moving through our own anger provides those around us with permission to feel the same. 

I’ve recently taken to pulling out my cell phone in moments of extreme rage. Typing out a poem or a piece of prose – complete with rage-induced typos – has been a powerful medicine to acknowledging, processing and moving through the rage of social injustice. 

Harnessing the passion of rage

What I do love about Rhea’s approach is that she doesn’t center whiteness or cis-men half as much as I do. 

This is why I believe there is a level of ignorance which is healthy and helpful for a person. 

It takes a certain level of maturity to be able to center joy and pleasure while also creating art, community and pathways for social justice. 

Perhaps, ignorance isn’t the right word. 

I see it more as a shift in consciousness. Shifting focus from the external to the internal. Instead of looking all around me, like a policewoman with a baton in hand, I pull away. I retreat from the world… go within. 

Within myself is an ocean of joy, pain, art, and pending rest. This is a farther worthy investment of my time than some random woman in a mall in California. 

Are you at PEACE or just spiritually by-passing the issue?

Rhea’s always had a pacifist non-confrontational approach to life. Maybe she was born with this nature, maybe it’s Middle Child Syndrome, or maybe it’s Maybelline. 

While I do look up to Rhea’s peaceful pacifist approach, at times it can be almost borderline complicit. Her response is both inspiring and infuriating.  

I feel a similar sort of frustration when I hear the words of spiritual teachings and leaders who side-stepped injustice. 

Spirituality and religion have been complicit in maintaining the status quo. These institutions have long since sided with the dominant class and perpetuated false narratives around meritocracy.

HOW do we find the middle path without spiritual bypassing?

I have no answers or conclusions. Just a lot of questions.

HOW?

How to BE in a world filled to the brim with micro and macro aggressions?

How do we unpack the indignities, the injustices and the insufficient progress caused by systems of oppression? 

How do we continue living our lives filled with joy and excitement – acknowledging the ire of oppression – but not allowing it to rob us of our true joy? 

How do we continue on the path to liberation engaging in a material world set-up to favor some over the others? 

How do we listen to the double messages, the conflicting bullshit without making it a serious problem?

I aspire to more than the isms of the world

I want to carry on with my life – aware of political injustice and oppression. 

I want to continue to make art with my hands, lips and my body. 

I want to read widely and enjoy the bright sunshine on wildflowers.

I want to continue to learn.

I want to grow up to be a Shashi Tharoor of sorts. So eloquent, so ambitious, so aware of British colonialism in India and the extent to which it has depleted India. I want to be like Tharoor – rolling of seven-syllable words of my tongue, publishing books, and ambitious as ever. Participating in international and local government. Although, I don’t want to be embroiled in as much scandal. 

This is what I want. 

And I want it for you, you and you. It is why I do the work I do. 

We don’t side-step injustice or pretend that it doesn’t exist. AND we don’t allow it to ROB us of our joy.

Here’s to justice-oriented living, breathing and art-making.

With love.

Eva

Editorial village credit: Thanks to Fiona Proctor for revisions and input on this piece & to my sister Rhea P – who has patiently listened to many a bitter diatribe through my journey of awakening.)