Today is my 44th birthday. I was brought to my motherâs arms as Ronald Reagan was being sworn in and then went to the airport to welcome the Iranian hostages homeâa meeting we now know was pre-arranged, as Reaganâs team negotiated to keep the hostages in captivity a little bit longer just so it could be Reagan, as opposed to Carter, who got the credit for releasing them.
Every four years my birthday falls on a US presidential inauguration. Some of those days are good; some are bad; some are terrible. Today is certainly one of the worst.
My birthday also sometimes falls on the day the US honors Martin Luther King, Jr.âor, when it doesnât, always on a day very close to it. I always spend some time on my birthday thinking of him, too. Like all of us, he wasnât perfect, but more and more what I think about regarding his legacy is how some of the things he said have been cherry-picked and stored like prize possessions in jeweled boxes for admiring every so often while the rest has been buried. MLK was an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War, of income inequality, and of capitalism. Of all things I remember the first time I heard anything by him about that was in college when I happened into a record store in San Francisco and heard one of his speeches (not the âI have a dreamâ speech) remixed in a song.
Often you will hear that you should focus on what you can control. This is true, when it comes to your own personal well beingâyour state of mind. I feel like there should be a balance, though. Sometimes your well being is well enough that you can spare the anguish that comes with worrying about the state of the worldâthe many injustices you canât fix, either by yourself or right away. We need that to push us to actually fix these things, either in small individual ways or collectively, through both direct and indirect action.
Each of us at different times in our livesâor on a micro level, at different times of the week or yearâgoes in and out of phases where we must focus on self-care and phases where we can look outward. Today I hope we can treat ourselves and each other with a little kindness when it comes to recognizing where it is we need to be in a given moment. Looking around on social media, it may seem that some are always onâalways fighting, always pushing for changeâand some are always offâcat memes, shipping, fandom. But thatâs nothing but a small window into a person. First, thatâs simply how that person interacts with one social media platform; itâs not their entire life. Second, it may be that this is the place they come to unwindâor, alternatively, this is the only place in their life where they can share the rage inside of them. Whoever they are, however they are, let them be, and offer them kindness. Itâs going to take all of us to fight back.
