Facebook Publication Date: 8/26/2020 18:08
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***REMEMBER OUR NORMS
I put this in the comments below, but I want to make sure it doesn’t get buried, because it goes to the heart of Who We Are and how we do or do not use destructive weaponry, *even when we have the opportunity*. Keep this in mind as you watch the video.
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I want to insert something here that is important, but that didn’t get fully developed in the video.
Remember when I was talking about the toilet paper holder? How it was heavy, and i had it right there in my hand?
Welp. What I had was a weapon. That I could have swung at her either before or after the punch. That would have done some real damage, actually.
People, when they hear the story, always ask me about that. ‘You had a weapon!’, they say. ‘Why on earth didn’t you use it to fend her off??’
This is where *practiced praxis* comes in. It never occurred to me to use that heavy paper holder to harm. Not once. When we are solid in our values and in who we are, there are some ‘options’ that are simply not options for us. That means, yes, we open ourselves to greater (short term) harm that we could otherwise sidestep.
Note that I said ‘short term’. It would be a different story, and *I would be a different woman* had I gone that route. But striking a person, either with my hand or with a tool is simply not something I can do. My personal pacifism is durable. It is total. And it is something I have deeply processed.
No, I had no idea I was going to be punched that Thursday night. But my ‘muscle memory’ is towards ‘do no harm’, regardless of the potential or actual harm being threatened or delivered to me.
This is a big deal. It means that people can do their worst–in a parking lot, or in online spaces. I cannot punch down on Jerbear when she weaponized my mental health or financial struggles from 18 years ago. I cannot punch down on Charles Toy and Mark Sandlin by gratuitously and unkindly using information that we know. They can and did and do. And, on a superficial level, that puts me at a distinct disadvantage.
But.
Just like in the aftermath of Grossmont Center, where I came out of that encounter with my personal morals and convictions intact, so it is with Charles and Mark and Jerbear.
The ultimate tragedy in both scenarios is if I allowed myself to become a lesser person, a person willing to move off long held and marrow deep convictions for short term gain.
This means I need to know *at all times* just what those values and convictions are, because if I don’t know them or if they are only dermis deep, or worse, like a cloak I can shrug off at choice points or pain points, I will abandon them, and in so doing, abandon myself.
If that were allowed, then yes, absolutely. Mark and Charles and Jerbear would have won. Because they would have made me to lose the part of myself that has made unshakable decisions.
So yes. There are more than one metaphorical toilet paper holders I could use against Charles and Mark and Jerbear. But that is not who I am.
And it cannot be who we are.
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