nursingforsocialjustice

We are so much the same, you and I. This can be hard to believe in a culture where we are constantly striving for personal greatness, and individual uniqueness, searching for our bliss and what makes us stand out from the person next to us. But really, we are all human beings sharing our human experience. This strange world we live in, where the talk we hear seems more and more polarized, it’s all or nothing, black or white, left or right. Spoken with such conviction, written with such seeming authority. And we believe it, even though logic tells us that there are many shades of gray. It is not complicated, these issues are complex. This idea that we can blame and shame our way out of this moral winter, I suspect, is not going to serve us well in the long term. But, in the moment, perhaps all that seems relevant, maybe all that is digestible, is the immediate.

I do not see how we collectively can move past this cognitive block, because in this constant fight against an enemy that is our polar opposite, we have become so invested in being right. Maybe we need to take a step back, to see, that we are sharing these experiences. It is easy to forget that we are all in this together, and perhaps nothing can change unless we embrace our togetherness. We cannot all be so preoccupied with our own self-interest. We can’t be, if we want to see what we all have in common, what we all share. When we lose connection, and relationship and commonalities, and kindness, what do we have left? I’m not sure. But, these thoughts lead to my many existential crises, where I begin to question, what are we all fighting for? And why does the rhetoric seem to be more and more hateful (not just angry)? And how do we get to a place where we are all sitting around the table, listening to each other, and hearing what is being said, in our hearts and our minds?

We have to change something about this popular rhetoric that we are either left or right. What does that even mean? We are either capitalists or…socialists? Communists? I wonder, how can we remove ourselves from the context of or lives, our experiences, our circumstance? Can we? Should we? Or maybe, it is more beneficial to recognize that we are all part of this machine. When we are inside the box, it sure makes it hard to see outside of the box.

My heart, my head, is guided by the experiences of my life, my childhood, my parents, my education, my profession. This framework, these cognitive schemas, that I am so attached to, I find I question more everyday. My existential crisis of the day was thinking about this feeling that I have had for the past year, that something I strongly believed might not be correct, crystallized on the car ride home. My career in mental health rested on this idea of a label somehow having the power to empower rather than stigmatize…but it’s wrong. This label that has structured programs, directed thinking, directed practice and clinicians into thinking that something that’s not happening is, and ignoring the resulting harm.

Some deep thinking has to happen in the next 4 weeks.

Peace,

Michelle D.