You see threads evolve and grow online. Here, for example. You yourself--your own feelings, your thoughts, and ultimately how you interact, and what you write, and what you comment--are part of this evolution, of course.
Recently I saw the Junot Diaz quote going around about decolonized love, and how important it is for us all to practice it, and how rare it is, in his opinion, even within a large movement as it is without. And it’s a popular quote, because it’s an important idea. And everybody is reblogging, And at the same time I’m thinking to myself, yet the most important part of this idea is still lacking from the page. What is this thing, decolonized love? What does it look like? This is what we need to know now, this is what we need to talk about.
Well, I don’t write this, I don’t re-blog, I don’t comment, because it’s my first thought about it. And part of how I like to do is not immediately react, despite how so much social media encourages such reflex. I need, generally, time to let thoughts work through me, time to let my mind and heart engage an idea at their own pace. Anything other than this seems to produce shallow thought, hectic things, chaos, mimicry, raw unformed emotion....
So as this thought is continuing within me I’m going about my life, the next day I read the post from someone that I follow, and this person asks this very question as a text post. Let’s start talking about this, they say. How do we practice this? Basically, the same exact response that I felt to this quote. I don’t know what prompted their questions, but that’s not so important.
This thing we call decolonized love, decolonization, it appears in many ways. It manifests on all levels, or it can. While on one hand the Academy, the schools, formalized manners of analysis, discussion, and lingo push this conversation forward, for me, part of this thing we call decolonization involves wresting language and ideas back from university halls and books with language that not every person can engage.
And part of that for me is this very process I’m talking about, where people are saying what does this mean? These feel like good ideas. I can tell this is true. But what does it mean to me? What does it mean in my simple little life as I walk around talking to people and trying to love, be loved, make money, stay healthy, stay strong?
It’s very important that we undertake this process. Colonization is about control. (Just like The Matrix!). It’s about theft, it’s about profit, it’s about greed, it’s about limits, it’s about borders, and walls, it’s about division, it’s about--always about--control. I was speaking about this, of course not in academic terms, to my six-year-old the other day. She was being right, and being vehement in her pronunciation that her younger sister was WRONG. And I began speaking to her about how it is possible to be right sometimes without someone being wrong. And that there are many ways to do a thing. This to me, is part of growing up in the land reeking and rife with the poisonous thinking and threads of colonized minds. When a thing in order to exist must nullify or negate another thing, by necessity; when there is such narrow and harsh parameters for movement, for ascension, for value--this is the colonized mind at work.
When goods, and a good thing, and a good life, are maintained not by the goodness and harmonious nature that they inherently possess, but because there are walls around them that separate them from the people who happen to not have 20 foot legs-and this includes the 20 foot legs of a university degree, bank account, etc—Then these are no longer good things, they are the treasure made possible by the colonized mind at work. Somewhere along the line.
And this work that we do to decolonize our minds and our hearts and our expectations and our value systems is so important, because if we do not, then we shall commit all the same crimes upon each other that colonization has committed against the world. There will be one-way valves, there will be gates, there’ll be theft, there will be violation, there’ll be domination, there will be nullification.
So I think an important place to start, in addition to continuing these conversations out here and in our lives, is breaking down in the simplest way possible how loving and a whole and healthy and flexible, fluid people might interact. Breaking it down in a way where you can speak it to, for example, a six-year-old and not have them lose attention. Kids are actually a good gauge. Because the moment you start bullshitting, which includes intellectualizing feelings and thoughts as well as using specialized lingo, they will float away. They will stop listening.
So those are my thoughts on decolonizing the mind and practicing decolonized love. As a final note, I am not sure I even like the term “decolonize.” I don’t mind at all if somebody else uses it of course, and I understand what they mean when they do. But for me I’m not going to be needing a reference to a crime, in order for me to find my way to my higher self. For me it’s more about feelings, for me the process and progress I make is guided by my body, I say. By feelings in my chest and in my belly and my hands, and my entire body. For me, it’s about remaining loose; remaining open; relaxing. Accepting. Listening. Being receptive. Not being sure. Not being right. Being still. These are things my body understands. These are things my heart understands. This is a recipe I can follow.
