Irony in the Time of COVID-19 and Social Uprising.
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To wear a mask is often to be called fear-based by a certain sector of our communities. It’s a go-to phrase about many things.
And specifically, if it is to be truly unveiled, it’s saying you are brainwashed by the media, a sheeple, and you are not quite spiritually or intellectually evolved because you are living in fear. Fear-based is a go-to. A predicted response. One of quite a few narratives going around. Narrative is also a go-to word that we see and use often, as I am doing here.
I am most, and above all things, fascinated by irony. Totally in love with irony in fact. It is intriguing, baffling, infuriating, elucidating, and so brimmed with absurdity that laughter does and must bellow out. Thankfully. Cathartically. Vital to our well-being. It is the human story. And it is splayed out so beautifully and blaringly these days. Every day. All day.
To wear a mask, as the perfect example right now, does in fact have absolutely nothing to do with being fear-based. It is community-minded and -hearted. It is kind. It is the way it is right now. It is the asking of us to turn away from being me-focused, albeit rare in the U.S, and be in collective awareness. The real collective, not just the easy-to-say We are one jargon of faux-collective.
I see so many in this particular genre of the population, specifically White people, speaking out only about their rights not to wear a mask and telling us the real COVID-19 numbers, etc., and how they refuse to be brain-washed and urge us to wake up and smell the manipulation.
Here, to me, lies the irony. Oh gorgeous, blaring irony. Teacher of mine. These are the very folks whom I have never seen or heard so much as a whisper from, unless it is in their defensiveness about it when called out, about social justice and dismantling the genocide of Black people, Indigenous people, and People of Color.
Yes, genocide.
Say it. Take it in, because that’s exactly what this is and what this has been for 400+ years.
Want to talk about rights? Oppression? Something to amplify out into the world right now? How about those rights?
Friendships are ending right now because of this. I am okay with it. Because deeper ones are also rooting in to the core and being built upon in the name of justice and love. True love. Hardcore tough love. Love that rages, tears down, dismantles, and yes, meditates, laughs, sits under the trees of a sweet breeze for a moment of renewal so we can rise again and stir shit up with a fierce, unstoppable passion.
A fight does not necessarily equate with divisiveness or fear-based, which is also ironically another narrative. This fight is love. It is primordial pounding of hearts. It is rage. It is fury. It is fiery. It is vital. It is powerful. And it is a joining. A coming together in a collective uprising like one I have never seen before, and am actively, humbly, gratefully, and fiercely a part of until the day I die.
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Leslie Caplan is a writer because she was born a writer. Writing is a portal into her discovery of self that unfurls her imagination, emotions, and the skill it takes to translate her own complexity into a visceral language that can be understood. She is an editor and writing coach, with an innate and cultivated ability to take a writer from beginning to end, and everywhere in between. It is her passion and determination to do so with strength, impact and a tremendous amount of heart. You can find her at her website.
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