dis-illusion
I always hesitate to make posts. This blog is part of overcoming that. Surrendering to the imperfection and the mistakes inherent in learning. I felt empowered by the idea of “showing my receipts” from Lama Rod Owens.
Disillusionment has been a theme for a while, but most potently in 2020. I can see it now as a process that started (almost 20 years ago) in my academic undergrad experience with international development. It continued with my graduate experience in environmental governance. It continues in my ever-evolving engagement with the nature of justice.
For me, the pandemic made space for reading. The juxtaposition of Seven Fallen Feathers against the ease with which the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit was rolled out, put a persistent illusion of mine clearly into focus. Where did all this money come from? Why wasn’t it available for other emergencies within Indigenous communities? Oh wait. Systemic racism. Oh Canada.
This is not new. I “know” that this deep inequity is all too routine. But for whatever reason, the obviousness of the injustice felt different in my body in this moment…. vibration, weight, nausea, rage, sincere disappointment, and the ugly, undermining feeling of being deceived by national level denial.
I was grateful for Stephen Jenkinson’s response to my lament of political deception and disillusionment over breakfast; wouldn’t you want to be dis-illusioned? To have illusions, falsehoods, removed from the lens with which you view the world? Yes, actually, I would.
Remove the illusions.
And there are consequences to seeing the world as it is, instead of how you wish it was (and in this wishing and hoping, it is easy to fabricate rationalizations, denials and excuses for why horrendous injustice happens).
For me, the consequences feel a bit like this stream of logic (that can feel shitty to admit):
we exist within violent systems
we all hold trauma in our bodies from our differing, uneven interactions with these forms of oppression
the capacity to be the oppressor exists in everyone; and that includes me
How does this violence and trauma live within me? How am I reproducing these systems each day? How does the culture in which I exist and participate reproduce these systems?
Sometimes it feels like just another ridiculous privilege to ask these questions and take up this space.
And sometimes it seems like the only sustainable action. To figure out how to carry this weight.
Listening more. Reading more. Feeling more.
And in the studio today, a heart opening, a heart break, and a surrender to weeping that, while brief, was real and unavoidable. Thank you to authors Resmaa Menakem and Cash Ahenakew for the incredible writings that generously offer perspectives and challenges that are shaping this journey of mine into a humble, vulnerable beginning of relational accountability.
