i was texting with someone i respect about my graduation announcement and plans and this is, among other conversation, what he had to say:
“You are rationalizing your own inability to complete an activity that you embarked on years ago. You are trying to create closure for yourself but you wont get it from this activity.
Totally indifferent - you have chosen the category of black men who refuse to rise above. I’m honestly fine with it. I accept you.”
i want to print this out and put it where i can read it every day. this shit is so real, and i’m finding so much to make out of it. this is wonderfully challenging, informed, disinvested, honest feedback.
i am so grateful for this feedback. maybe 3 days ago this would’ve crushed me in my pursuits and decisions and commitments, but now i invite it to inform them. this is a valid perspective that i want to consider and let inform my work/life/engagement.
so much of this work is about discovery, about making choices and recording and sorting through the information gathered. if i am truly approaching this as research, a finding out, i am thus compelled to ask - what happens if i consider this perspective instead of dismissing it, getting defensive, feeling crushed? what if i take it in, let it sit, and study it? i asked for his thoughts and he shared them. it’s my responsibility to decide what i do what it.
A PERSPECTIVE TO CONSIDER:
this is another son of dust, just like me. this is someone with a mother, with a father, with good and bad times just like me. this is someone at the intersections of various identities - just like me. this is someone who has sinned, who has gloried, who has smiled, who has cried, just like me. this is someone who shares their work, someone who struggles, someone who victories, someone who eats and shits, and sometimes smells bad just like me. that’s the context i choose to consider the responsez to me, my work, my actions, my thoughts, my deeds from.
what does this say about the person who told me that? what do they know, what do they not know? what happens if i invite this beautiful person’s experience, worldview, expression into my life? what happens if my response to this feedback is “yes, AND.”? what if i answered all the proposals directed at and about me with an enthusiastic YES! tempered with an equally enthusiastic and thorough- AND!
with a yes, this opens up a whole conversation about education, access, authority, power, class, race, kujichagulia, sankofa, colonialism, people’s skills, ceremony, the function of naming, the function of intention, history, colonialism - a whole wealth of intersections and perspectives to consider and explore and grow from learning about.
yes | AND
here is my yes and:
yes - you (i, larry d. rosalez) have chosen (a deliberate choosing) the category of black men (and all the controversies and beauty and histories this expression carries with it) who refuse (an emphasis on choice and autonomy, and informed decision making) to rise above (the little people, the lay folk) by begging permission from a system i did NOT choose, i inherited, to recognize my efforts and contributions. if they won’t see, recognize, name me, imma see, recognize, name myself #kujichagulia)
yes - you (i, larry d. rosalez) are rationalizing (making sense out of, organizing, thinking about, meditating, and acting on) your own inability to complete an activity (i extend the invitation for anyone who wants to see me get a diploma from UF to pay the $15,000 hold that makes me unable to register for courses) that you embarked on years ago (my 10 year high school anniversary is this summer. i have lived a lot of life since fall 2006. this is a journey i embarked on before i could drink, before i was registered to vote, before i took a single college course, before i understood debt, and accreditation, and systemic racism, and colonialism, and classism, and before i considered spiritual things and self care. one might say i embarked on the journey in ignorance & might hold my ability to reason & make decisions for myself at this point in my life as more valuable than the choices & contributions of a 17 year old larry d. rosalez) you are trying to create closure for yourself but you wont get it from this activity. (YES!!!! i am creating a closure for myself and this is ceremony isn’t for me, it’s my announcement to everyone else. it’s the result of my being done with school long ago, but now i am naming and inviting witness to my state of being. the closure will come from my demonstration and application of knowledge gained in and out of the university school system, not from a ceremonious occasion. i know the closure will only come from god tho)
