There are 7.8 billion people in the world. Each of these people have had a different experience than mine. Still, there are times when I get to feeling sorry for myself because people don’t understand what I have been through or when I get too full of myself because surely no one has triumphed over adversity quite like I have. When I finally cut the pouting or self-admiration, I try to remember that my human experience is just one of almost 8 billion and that just because something hasn’t happened to me, it doesn’t meant that it hasn’t happened.
- Just because you think protestors who destroy property should “be better”, it doesn’t mean that this country wasn’t started by people dumping someone else’s property into the ocean.
- Just because you were able to pull yourself up by the bootstraps, it doesn’t mean that others aren’t shoe less.
- Just because you believe that peacefully kneeling is disrespectful, it doesn’t mean that the systematic abuse and brutality of African Americans isn’t in a completely different stratosphere of awful.
- Just because it may not be what you would have done, it doesn’t mean that you can’t be compassionate to others.
- Just because there are good cops, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t incredibly bad ones.
- Just because you’ve never seen a loved one ravaged by Covid, it doesn’t mean that 100,000 families aren’t experiencing immeasurable grief and anguish over a disease that was allowed to run buckshot for months while we were promised that it would magically disappear by heat or by injecting bleach.
- Just because what they say isn’t convenient for you, it doesn’t mean that an expert’s opinion doesn’t matter more than yours.
- Just because it is my way, it doesn’t mean that it is the only way.
- Just because you don’t acknowledge the difference in how armed men storming a capitol building because they can’t go to Golden Corral and people protesting yet another death of an unarmed man are handled, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t simply black and white.
- Just because you’ve never been harassed for barbecuing in a park or swimming in your neighborhood pool or waiting for AAA in your apartment complex parking lot or bird watching in a bird watching park, it doesn’t mean that some aren’t hated for having the audacity to live their lives while having darker skin.
- Just because you’ve never worried about your kid wearing a hoodie or eating Skittles or playing cops and robbers, doesn’t mean that millions of parents aren’t gripped by fear every time they send their kids out into the world.
- Just because you like to circulate the picture of protestors dressed in suits and ties and pearls and heels peacefully protesting, it doesn’t mean that they weren’t brutally attacked by the police five minutes after the picture was taken.
- Just because you label it “fake news” reported by the “lamestream media”, it doesn’t mean that democracy doesn’t die in the darkness.
- Just because you wanna talk like a 1950s wise guy, it doesn’t mean that we haven’t noticed that the lights are off and that you’re hiding in the basement while the country burns around you.
- Just because the system is broken, it doesn’t mean the system isn’t necessary.
- Just because it happened in the past, it doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen.
- Just because you frame it as an alternative fact, it doesn’t mean that it’s not a lie.
- Just because you tweet the word “thugs”, it doesn’t mean we don’t know that it is only a slightly less racist word for what you wanted to say.
- Just because you don’t see your privilege, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t need to be checked.
- Just because you excuse it all away, it doesn’t mean that leaders aren’t held to a higher standard and that their words don’t matter more.
- Just because I accept that he is the 45th President of the United States, it doesn’t mean that I have to support his narcissistic, racist, misogynistic, anti-semitic, homophobic views and lies.
- Just because you feel like your voice is heard, it doesn’t mean that a lot of people don’t feel as if they’ve been put on mute.
- Just because he was a grown man, it doesn’t mean that as the life was leaving his body that George Floyd didn’t call out to the woman who gave that life to him.
- Just because some may believe that the only good Democrat is a dead one, it doesn’t mean that a whole big wave of us ain’t dead yet.
- Just because you go to church on Sunday, it doesn’t mean that your God isn’t watching what you do the other six days a week.
- Just because you want to protect all the unborn babies, it doesn’t mean that we don’t see your blind eye to brown kids in cages and black kids in graves.
And, just because if you’re reading this, you can still breathe, it does mean that you have not just an opportunity but a responsibility to extend grace, to show empathy and to allow the experiences of other people to penetrate your soul and settle into your marrow. We have a tragically brief time on this beautiful, upside-down planet. We can use that time being filled with hate, and vitriol and suspicions just because someone makes different choices than us or has different traditions than us or worships different gods than us or we can learn, appreciate, support, protect and love the billions of experiences of all our fellow humans.
Painting of George Floyd by Joel Tesch (Instagram: @artbyjoeltesch)
This article was written by a guest blogger. The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not reflect the opinions of Bob Lacey, Sheri Lynch or the Bob & Sheri show.
Soshally Awkward
Sosha Lewis is a writer whose work has been featured in The Washington Post, Huffington Post, MUTHA Magazine and The Charlotte Observer. She writes about her sometimes wild, sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking past filled with free-lunches, a grimy sports bar, a six foot tall Albino woman who tried to save her teenage soul, felonious, drug addicted parents, an imaginary friend named Blueberry and growing up nestled in the coal-dusted mountains of West Virginia.
