intergenerational liberation

08 May 2019

so over the past few weeks/my whole life, i’ve been thinking a lot about liberation (LOL surprise surprise). i’ve also been thinking a lot about intergenerational trauma and healing. and in this moment, i think i’ve come to a conclusion (that i know is not the first this conclusion has been come to and it’s probably not even the first time i’ve come it, but it’s got new depth this time):

liberation isn’t something “over there” or “in the future.” liberation is here and now or it is nowhere. liberation isn’t a thing we can give to our nibblings or grandnibblings or great-grandnibblings. it is something we have to cultivate for ourselves and then give them to tools to cultivate it for themselves.

this came up (this time) because i’ve been talking and thinking with friends about how our parents fucked us up. and how the ways our parents fucked us up are direct or indirect reactions to the ways their parents fucked them up and they (our parents) tried to correct for when they raised us. and how, in the raising our children, we are unintentionally fucking them up. and how they will respond/react to that in raising their kids when they have them.

and then the universe opened up and i was like OMG THIS HAS BEEN HAPPENING LITERALLY FOR THE WHOLE EXISTENCE OF OUR SPECIES.

this, i believe, is what people mean when they talk about having mystical experiences. you’re just thinking and then all of a sudden… BLAMMO! you realize that you’re just one tiny person in lines of billions of people who have all been dealing with the same thing.

ok so pulling it back down… if this has been true for as long as our species has existed, the work is really as simple as the meditation teachers say: freedom is experienced in the present moment. the past and the future are stories we tell about presents that are coming and going. there won’t ever be a world where we create societies and worlds that are “liberated” because it’s impossible; it doesn’t actually make sense. we can create contexts (in our families, homes, communities, watersheds) where people can have access to their own liberation. but that’s it. we each have to individually understand and work to step into our own liberation and that is what puts us into the understanding that our freedom is bound up together because i have the same access to liberation that harriet tubman did (while freeing slaves) that desmond tutu did (while in jail) that laurence mckeown did (while on hunger strike)…

et cetera.

ps - i could be wrong. pps - part of me is like: omg i sound insane (in the true meaning of the term). another part of me is like: well this insight really takes the pressure off LOL. the last part of me is like: people have been saying this for millenia and i’m glad i finally arrived.

words / writing / post-processing
368w / 16min / 5min