the pacific north witch

Open Your Heart: How to Stay (Mostly) Good in a (Sometimes) Bad World

Posted on by Shanna S Mathews-Mendez

About two months ago, I had an epiphany that essentially led to the launching of this website.  I wanted to live a good life, only a good life, all the time.  I wanted to not pay rent to people who see me as a means of income only, not a member of a community, not a beloved contributor to the property who’s lived in my building for twenty years.  I want my own place that belongs to me.

I wanted to not pay bills to people who don’t care about me as a bill payer, who don’t value my business, who see me as a means of making more millions for stockholders, as beholden to them for the services I want.  I want to pay for only services that I decide I want to the companies that I find care the most for their customers. I want my husband and my brother not to work at jobs that kill their souls, that treat them like numbers, widgets on a page to be handled and mishandled as they see fit.  I want them to love what they do like I do.

I begin with this site.  I want to write to people, about people, and for people.  Yes, I want to make money from my blog and from the book I will write, but not because of ads on my site, not because I’ve “sold out.”  No.  I want to make money because people see value in what I’m saying and connect to my site in a way that makes them feel heard, feel valued, feel like they’re part of a conversation.

The first thing I had to do was check myself.

I get really angry at injustice.  I have suffered in my life in many ways, and I have seen my loved ones suffer on a grand scale, a scale that makes my claws and my fangs come out.  As a result of this injustice and suffering I get mean and vicious and angry.

But I realized as I was thinking about what I wanted my website to be, about what I wanted to write to the world, that I didn’t want to be “Angry White Lady Ranting.”

I don’t have all the answers. Yes, I’ve admitted it.  Copy it.  Paste it.  It is now officially in black and white.  I have not got it all figured out.

I have failed.  I have wounded.  I have fallen short of my own expectations.  I have lost a sister.  Almost lost another one.  I’m working on getting them back.  I have hurt people who trusted me.  I have literally fallen while carrying my own child because I aim to hard and too fast for perfection.  And I am reminded daily that I am not perfect.

So this website is about imperfection. If I get things right, I’ll share them.  When I get things wrong, I’ll share those too.  And I am currently working on a series that involves digging into the beauty of imperfection, the complexity of seemingly average, everyday people, and what makes each of those people special.  I’m calling it “Sonder.”

But today I’m thinking about staying good, about keeping the claws sheathed.

I frequently ride the line between good and bad, and I ride it very precariously at times.

I have been accused, with reason, of being a man hater.

I have been told, by more than one person, that I am racist against white people.  (Confession: I am as white as they come.)

There is a hard heartedness that runs through my bloodline, and at times it is a tough inheritance to deny.

I have seen the worst of men, the worst of white people, the worst treatment of children at the hands of people who should love them. And I began seeing these atrocities from a very young age.  It is difficult to stay happy and hopeful in a world full of hurt and hate.

In a strange way, I think this struggle may be where police officers come from.  I have come across more than a few cops in my day, and I am always treated with smiles and kind words; they give sticker badges to my daughters; I have gotten away with more than a couple of speeding tickets.  But I know this is because I am a white woman.  I am the picture perfect image of a “non threat.” In fact, I am what they picture when they put on their uniform to protect and serve.

Cops are in the street every day, and if they are in inner cities, they see criminal at all levels on a regular basis.  Many cops may go into their profession to “protect and serve”and then end up killing an innocent, unarmed person of color because the cop was sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that the person was a threat.  Think about it.  If all you ever see are criminals, if all you are surrounded by every day are people who hate you, who hurt others, who are compelled to live a kill or be killed existence, you yourself will begin to see every person from that environment as a criminal, as a savage, as a threat, someone who will kill you if given a chance.  It is the reason Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown 12 times.  It is the reason Jeronimo Yanez says he “had no choice” but to shoot Philando Castile.  These men, charged with protecting their communities, in the moments they killed these innocent men, genuinely thought they were protecting their own lives.  Wilson describes seeing a beast charging toward him.  Yanez says he feared for his life.  The reality is that it is highly unlikely either cop was in danger of dying, or even getting seriously hurt, especially Yanez.  The reality is that both cops are victims themselves of a system that pits good against evil, and certain people, namely black people in this society, bear the brunt of “the evil.”  American society has decided that we will place a large portion of our fears and anxieties, our problems, at the feet of black people.  It is still quite common to find a story about a white girl who claims to have been raped and beaten, held hostage, almost killed, by a “large black man.”

The mentality, the American consciousness at large, places black people, and specifically black men, at the center of violence, criminality, and savagery.  And it has recently been found that Latinos suffer from a similar racist stereotype.

Cops shoot unarmed black men, and slam Latino men, and black men and women onto hoods of cars, pound their faces into pavement, rips arms behind backs, jump out of cruisers, run up, and punch people of color in the face because they believe they are dealing with the worst of society, animals.  And they believe this because they work in cities where crime is higher because population is higher, and in the inner cities where these crimes are happening, the majority of the people in the community are people of color.  And they believe this because America has told them this for four hundred years. Not even people of color are immune to this fear.  Fear the black man. All of those dots lead cops to genuinely, and highly unreasonably, believe they are in danger, so they close their eyes and empty their clips.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Blink, makes numerous useful recommendations for what we can do to change this mentality:  spend more time with black people in black spaces, surround ourselves with positives images of black people, watch the Olympics and see our incredible medalists who are black, and more.  But until we recognize that we have a problem, we cannot hear solutions.

My situation is a bit different.  I am not afraid of black people or other people of color.  I do not believe that all people of color, or even a majority, are criminals or inherently violent.  Somehow, the environment that I grew up in and the kids I spent time with saved me from fulfilling my destiny as a white woman with inherent racial biases, and I have found myself somehow on the other extreme, always railing against white people who remain silent in the face of injustice.

I am Diggy in Save the Last Dance:  “please, I am down!”

I am, and have always been, that white girl.

My problem is anger at the average person; I get angry with parents who abandon their children; I get angry at men who abuse their women; I get angry at children who bully other children. And then, like those cops, I take my anger and paint with a broad brush.

I realized alongside my recent epiphany that this made me in some ways just as bad as those cops.  I am walking out into the world angry at ninety percent of people for what a much, much smaller percentage of those people are actually doing.  I know it sounds obvious, but I actually have to tell myself that most men are not abusive, most parents just want what is best for their children, and most children are just assholes.

I’m kidding!

Most kids are just kids.

So, I had to go out into the world without the anger, without the mistrust, without the chip on my shoulder, without being offensive as a form of defense.

I had to take action on a regular basis to combat and reshape my approach to the world.  If I wanted to see the complexity of people, everyday people, I had to open myself up to them. If I wanted to write about how people have depth and emotion, about how each person has something special inside them, and that we can find it if we look, I had to look.

So I did.

I am already a naturally positive person about my own life and future, about my friends and family.  Now I had to channel that positivity into my relationships with strangers.  Instead of thinking about what a fucker that person is who cut me off, I reminded myself to think, “wow, probably super distracted.’  Instead of getting stressed about the long lines at Costco I settled in and played with my kids while we waited to get to the front.  I remind myself to look into people’s eyes and smile with my heart, to ask how a stranger’s day was and wait to listen to the answer.

And today was a lesson to me that when I seek ways to be good to people, to help, to listen, to do my part to make another’s day better, the opportunities would throw themselves at me.

First, the guy behind me at Costco, in that really long line, was carrying two jars of honey tea.  Two jars.  I had a dozen bottles of wine, a cart full of food, and two kids.  So I told the cashier to let him go first.  I could see the authentic shock and pleasure in his face when he saw me handing his jars to the cashier.  I nodded my head, “go ahead.”  He said, “hey thank you so much!”

Next I struck up a quick conversation while getting gas at Costco with an old white guy in a giant pickup truck, just the kind of person I would usually roll my eyes at behind his back.  We waved as I drove off. I didn’t even roll my eyes afterward.

Then I was driving down the road and I saw the car in front of me had its gas tank cover open.  I know this is not a big deal, but at the red light, once all the cars stopped, I jumped out of my car and ran to the car.  As I was approaching, the young girl wearing a headscarf was rolling down her window.  “Your gas cap is open!”  I said to her smiling.  “Want me to close it?” “Oh yea, thanks!” She responded.  So I did.  Not a mile later I saw another truck with the gas cap hanging open.  As we pulled up to the red light I honked and rolled down my window: “hey your gas cap is open!”  “Oh thanks!” The guy smiled and waved.

My five year old in the backseat said, “Wow, gas caps are open everywhere today.”

None of this changed the world.  I didn’t stop an alien invasion or help get Trump impeached.  But I made people smile, strangers on the street and in the store, people I ordinarily might not talk to and may disagree with on many things.  And ideally, and I believe this is true, I helped give them hope, I restored a little faith in humanity.  I can recognize that we are in a place right now where we want to hunker down and turn away from each other, make people who disagree with us evil horrible people in our minds.  We are right and they are wrong.

And I don’t want to live that way.  It is a hard life to live when you’re constantly angry at all the injustices of the world.

Don’t get me wrong, I will still fight injustice, I will still bare my claws and my fangs when real abusive men abuse women, when adults victimize children, when racism rears its ugly head, and yes, when ignorant brainwashed cops shoot unarmed black men.  I will be a good bitch.  I will fight when I must, and I will laugh easy when I don’t have to fight.  I’m not saying it will be seamless.  It is much easier sometimes to just be the bad bitch, looking out at all times for offenses, both imagined and real.  But it doesn’t make me feel good inside, it isn’t good for my kids or my family as a whole, and it does no good for the world for me to be always ready for a fight. I am working really hard to be the change I want to see in the world.

This is my current project.  There is a bad bitch inside me, and she will always be with me, hooked talons at the ready, but I’m pretty sure I can channel her into a good bitch, who can use love and light to face the world and only pull out the sharpened nails when absolutely necessary.

So as I walk my yellow brick road on the way through my own personal journey to enlightenment, when I come across Glinda and she asks, in her high pitched syrupy voice, “Are you a good bitch?  or a bad bitch?”  I can look her in the eye, wearing my ruby red slippers, and say to her in all honesty: “both.  And I already know my way home.”

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