#axhinfluencez

#axhRESPONSEZ: yes | AND

i was texting with someone i respect about my graduation announcement and plans and this is, among other conversation, what he had to say:

“You are rationalizing your own inability to complete an activity that you embarked on years ago. You are trying to create closure for yourself but you wont get it from this activity.

Totally indifferent - you have chosen the category of black men who refuse to rise above. I’m honestly fine with it. I accept you.”

i want to print this out and put it where i can read it every day. this shit is so real, and i’m finding so much to make out of it. this is wonderfully challenging, informed, disinvested, honest feedback.

i am so grateful for this feedback. maybe 3 days ago this would’ve crushed me in my pursuits and decisions and commitments, but now i invite it to inform them. this is a valid perspective that i want to consider and let inform my work/life/engagement.

so much of this work is about discovery, about making choices and recording and sorting through the information gathered. if i am truly approaching this as research, a finding out, i am thus compelled to ask - what happens if i consider this perspective instead of dismissing it, getting defensive, feeling crushed? what if i take it in, let it sit, and study it? i asked for his thoughts and he shared them. it’s my responsibility to decide what i do what it.

A PERSPECTIVE TO CONSIDER: this is another son of dust, just like me. this is someone with a mother, with a father, with good and bad times just like me. this is someone at the intersections of various identities - just like me. this is someone who has sinned, who has gloried, who has smiled, who has cried, just like me. this is someone who shares their work, someone who struggles, someone who victories, someone who eats and shits, and sometimes smells bad just like me. that’s the context i choose to consider the responsez to me, my work, my actions, my thoughts, my deeds from.

what does this say about the person who told me that? what do they know, what do they not know? what happens if i invite this beautiful person’s experience, worldview, expression into my life? what happens if my response to this feedback is “yes, AND.”? what if i answered all the proposals directed at and about me with an enthusiastic YES! tempered with an equally enthusiastic and thorough- AND!

with a yes, this opens up a whole conversation about education, access, authority, power, class, race, kujichagulia, sankofa, colonialism, people’s skills, ceremony, the function of naming, the function of intention, history, colonialism - a whole wealth of intersections and perspectives to consider and explore and grow from learning about.

yes | AND here is my yes and:

yes - you (i, larry d. rosalez) have chosen (a deliberate choosing) the category of black men (and all the controversies and beauty and histories this expression carries with it) who refuse (an emphasis on choice and autonomy, and informed decision making) to rise above (the little people, the lay folk) by begging permission from a system i did NOT choose, i inherited, to recognize my efforts and contributions. if they won’t see, recognize, name me, imma see, recognize, name myself #kujichagulia)