Ever since I became a social work educator, my students have consistently opened my eyes, humbled me, and shared beautiful tidbits about the world in so many different ways. Something I try to teach them, and most intentionally with my first group of students, was the practice of integrity. I did not just emphasize doing what is right always, yes that, but more importantly embracing thy self as a whole. This means that I have tried to teach all of my students to be grateful for every component of who they are and the experiences they’ve lived, even those dark and hated parts. It is the shadowed parts of ourselves that manifest the deepest level of empathy for our clients. If we social workers cannot love who we are, then we cannot empower our clients to do the same.
We all have been through one type of hell or another, and we don’t have to self-disclose what that all entails. Usually I found, clients and research participants too, could look in my eyes and know I empathized, without me ever sharing why. For some reason, our clients sense things about us. I think it might just be our nature as people. They can sense us and especially when we are being inauthentic. Integrity is one of our core values for good reason, and we need to tap into its strength to enhance how clients uplift themselves. So I made sure and make sure to teach that concept to my students. The first course I ever taught was intended to be a simple space for students to process their field learning. I was allotted both the time and flexibility to give them non-mandated readings to promote integrity. They received some of my favorite hip hop lyrics, poems, Dr. King’s ‘I have a dream’, and more. The 11 of us worked really hard, and toward the end of the semester the students were creating the integrity work-sheets. I have been really blessed and not just with that group, but truly most of the students I’ve taught are world movers and world shakers. They’re an accomplished set of people and I could write volumes on what they are doing, but I won’t. That is probably a breach of their confidentiality anyway. I will say that I might have started off trying to teach them to embrace who they are, but typically that gets switched around and they remind me to love myself as I am. I do hope that my past, present, and future students learned/will learn to make their own noise, at the least, from me. One thing I always share with students, is “The Book of Qualities”, by J. Ruth Gendler. This book personifies each emotion and as mentioned in a previous blog, we personify the emotions that we feel. In poetry we talk about inanimate objects as being personified, but for some reason there’s not a whole lot of direct attention paid to personification as a people-oriented conceptual framework. In truth, it’s not always bad to personify our emotions, we simply have to discipline the emotional states that cause harm. For example, if you are feeling jealous, don’t put another person down because of your own insecurities. The person on the other side has feelings too. If you are feeling greed, don’t go and steal from someone. However, if you are happy, you should most definitely smile and share that light with others. So how does this relate to doing you and integrity? Relationally, this blog is simply encouraging you the reader, to be who you are. Be grateful for every single thing that has ever happened to you and use that energy to make the world better. Do what you love. Spend as much time as you can with the people and animals too, who make you feel good about you. Instead of looking in the mirror and identifying your flaws, sit back and see the beauty that is you. Remember that contrasting realities, manifest into appreciation. Our moon would not be so beautiful, nor could we even recognize its cyclical nature, if its brightness was not illuminated by the dark. Love all of you. Make decisions that promote self-love and happiness. Be and do you. This is your obligation as a living being gifted with life. In closing, today I wrote a poem about Pluto. It's actually going to be one of my first performance poems here in Cleveland, next week. Part of me is performing poetry. Right now I’m telling all of you, not to let people decide who you are for you, unlike Pluto. Be a planet if that’s what you want to be, no one has any right to say otherwise.
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I’m ashamed to admit that ever since Donald Trump became the president, I have been avoiding news and media outlets as much as possible. His election crippled me with fear, knowing very well that having such a leader would devastate the United States and the World. I’m scared and have been a coward, too petrified to face realities I have trouble coping with. Now is not the time to for me to be a coward or avoid the truth; what is needed from me and all of humankind is profuse awareness, sincere caring, and deep bonding. More than ever we must come together and give whatever we can of ourselves to heal an ailing world.
I have to be honest, I don’t believe in coincidences. That is not to say that I believe in fate, but more like causation. Typically when power-hungry and greedy people become world leaders, the entire world suffers. There’s hardly anyone left who remembers World War II and the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Most of us has no reference point for man-made mass destruction on earth, which places us in a very precarious situation. Without the recollection of total devastation, there is the risk of an atom bomb being dropped again. North Korea is threatening to drop an atom bomb, whose destructive power greatly surpasses what was dropped on Japan to end World War II. North Korea has been testing their bombs of mass destruction. I’m scared and also believe that revisiting nuclear bombs as options for both defensive and offensive weapons, has in some way caused Nature or Mother Earth to fight back. Maybe I’m crazy, but I don’t believe in coincidences. There might even be some real scientific data to support my theory of causation…that North Korea’s recent bomb tests may have caused three hurricanes to occur. We all know from history that nuclear bombs shatter the world. Maybe there is no scientific link to the bomb tests and the hurricanes and although I don’t believe in coincidences, I do believe in karma. Not one, not two, but three hurricanes are terrorizing our planet. People are dead and/or dying, towns and cities are in upheaval, despair and sadness are pervading our hemisphere. Nature is reminding of what destruction looks, feels, smells, hears, and tastes like. The thing about hurricanes, and other natural disasters is that eventually the water dries up, the lava cools, or the earth stops shaking. People start rebuilding moments after the natural danger subsides. The thing about nuclear weapons is that the world doesn’t dry up and it doesn’t stop shaking. The toxic energy created by these bombs is maintained in the soil. The earth is diseased. The earth is diseased causing all of its inhabitants- humans, animals, plants, birds, insects alike to be diseased. More than 40 years after the first atomic bombs were dropped, nuclear bombs affects were still identified as the leading cause of cancer in Japan. Now think about the type of bombs we have now and ask yourself “What type of mass devastation will they cause?” It’s pretty scary to think about and even more horrifying than the reality of three hurricanes. I think now is a time that we all, including our world leaders, reflect on these hurricanes. More specifically, that we meditate on what caused them and also their implications. These wealthy and childlike men playing their war games, need to really look at what mostly repairable destruction looks like, and put their weapons away. There is a difference between showing up and being present where these disasters occurred. We cannot have a president going to Texas, and pretty soon Florida, and say “As tough as this was, it was wonderful”. There is nothing wonderful about a hurricane killing people and destroying one of the largest cities in America. That tells me that he doesn’t feel the turmoil of the people, to be so far removed emotionally as to describe massive destruction as "wonderful". What I want to see is heartfelt tears for the pain people are experiencing because of a natural disaster and oh I don’t know, maybe a large sum of money donated by our filthy rich president to aid in the repair, not just in our country, but in Cuba and the Caribbean too. It’s not like he’s lacking in wealth and can’t afford to help financially. Let me see our president donate a fifth of his income, and I’ll call it wonderful, but that’s unlikely. And that brings me to what we should do. Those of us that can donate, should donate as much as we can financially. Those who can’t donate, I ask you to practice profuse awareness, sincere caring, and attempt to bond deeply with people in a loving and careful way. Take time to send your love and sympathies to people being affected by the hurricanes. Stop and mourn for a moment over what has been lost. Now and most importantly, start expelling hope. Sing hope. Dance hope. Yell hope. Whisper hope. Play hope. Reflect, reverberate, and release hope that things will get better. They will get better. I dedicate this blog to all of you that have suffered in anyway because of the hurricanes. |
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