EXPERTS

We Can Be Experts

I don’t care if you don’t know how, I don’t care if it’s your first time. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know how, I don’t know either. You know that you have to do something, I know you are scared, I’m scared too. There is so much and the darkness at the edges is real and our fear for ourselves, the integrity of our family, our jobs, homes, even our minds. The anxiety of not knowing, the very ground becoming unstable. The sadness of our future that once was long and now to have long dreams is a decadent luxury when it is the coming morning that dictates the limits of our imagination.

We make and continue to make the things that build our world and our access to it was always limited, now more so. A harder world. A colder world. A darker world. The constant guard against the moral harms of engaging closer to the hardness, knowing that it might ease a burden. There is no promise we now realize, there never was. The pained laugh of witnessing cruelty to get by. We both know it was supposed to be better. But we are the ones who make things, with our hands and minds.

The scolding experts create new hierarchies in places that promise liberation. If you do it, you will do it wrong. The constant barrage of words and images lying in their reminders of the petty differences that give us identity. Will you use the wrong words? Yes. Will you know who wrote the book? No. Will you be uncomfortable? Yes. We haven’t written the dictionary of our liberation yet, the revolutionary biographies haven’t been written yet, the shelter of solidarity hasn’t been built yet. The encouraged silence, and learned difference to the expert paralyzes us when we meet together.

No one prepared us for when we slip into totalitarianism that it would be dull. Yes the news and feeds shout and cry demanding attention, but we’ve heard it before. No school taught us of the grey slog that life like this would be. Even the victors seem dulled and dour. We can fill our days with work, sleep, work but there is a longing inside us, an ache and hunger for more. It’s time to satisfy those pangs.

We may not have the answers, and we may not know exactly where we are going. No matter what, we are going together. The feeling that there is more, more for all of us is a real feeling and should be embraced. The options present to us are either more of this terribleness, restoration of the previous badness, or liberation. Too many lives are at stake to accept the first, the second delays the inevitable, but the third offers a chance to reset the relationships, try and ensure that society has room for all and a cleaner brighter future. But for that to happen we do have to let go of somethings and step up.