Freedom to Ramble

This week has been a tough one.

There is a tenseness in the air that seems to drown some cripplingly, while others go about their day unfazed. I'm so tired in my heart and in my brain and in whatever secular equivalent exists for the metaphysical "soul," in which I've never truly believed, but that apparently exists just to bare the wounds of violence. I feel an unrelenting heaviness, like hauling bricks in my invisible knapsack, which I keep trying to unpack but it still feels somehow dutiful to carry that weight.

The issue of free speech has been coming up a lot for me in light of the recent national debates and movements and thinkpieces and op-eds being released regarding the militarization of police and the epidemic of police brutality and the need to endlessly explain that all lives can't matter until black and brown lives do...

On Facebook and other social media I am often tempted to delete anyone who shares articles that I find offensive or ignorant or that perpetuate aspects of our culture that I consider to be shameful. But after this week it feels important to fight that urge, to burst that bubble, to stop isolating myself from challenging conversations. I have the freedom to curse my President (not that I do, or would), to criticize my professors (as if), to march through the Wednesday Night Market with cardboard signs criticizing the gang-like mentality of the police force. Because I have the freedom to do these things, I must also allow others the airtime to speak their minds as well. And if I don't like what they have to say, I want to learn to be better about telling them so, and opening that dialogue.

It has not been an easy path for me to get to where I am today, but I decided very young that my education was something that I valued over everything else. I take it seriously, and appreciate that I have been able to utilize what SRJC makes accessible to me - but not everyone operates that way. A lot of people right now are operating out of what looks like hatred, but is a deep fear. And we can all understand fear.