I Had a Dream
A skeleton lay in front of me. Slowly the inner organs appeared in place, like a medical text book illustration. Then tissue, tendons and muscles. Finally a skin, black in colour, encompassed the human being.
A round shaped head then appeared fully taking up my entire field of vision and said in a deep male voice that vibrated within me: “I’ve been telling you for 10,000 years that you are all the same”.
As a ten year old this was quite impactful and felt moving and visceral. It has stayed with me.
I feel lucky to have grown up in multi-cultural London, worked in culturally diverse work places and for most of my career been a part of female dominated teams.
But I am a white, western, university educated male and hence, systemically privileged*.
I have only recently learned that certain concepts the dream put across might be ok for a ten year old but do not work for me now. If I try to hold onto “we are all the same” I implicitly deny the experiences of others who are culturally diverse from me. There are lived realities that I can only dream of and wonder about but will never happen to me.
I can weep, feel sad and rage at the atrocities. And I do. Mostly though, right now, I am listening.
If you too are interested in Mindfulness and racial justice you’ll probably like this podcast: https://www.mindful.org/a-conversation-on-mindfulness-bias-and-racial-justice/
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_privilege
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