Tag: emotions

When Kanye Prayed

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A number of similarities exist between my family and the Kardashian family that at times has made it seem like my own is some parallel universe version of America’s most notorious reality TV family. My mother, Karla with a K, gave her three daughters K names and our brother a different letter. My father, though not defensive of one OJ Simpson, did have an untimely death ala Robert Kardashian, Sr. And as a matter of fact, my oldest sister shared a wedding date with Kim herself, though Kari’s marriage has lasted well beyond the 72 days Kim stayed with Kris Humphries.

Thankfully there are not too many other coincidences, and while it would be nice to have their millions in the bank, I’m grateful for my humble upbringing and the shaping it did for me. But a few years back when things for that family were a little different than present-day, Kanye West penned a song for his and Kim’s first daughter, North.

As I lay me down to sleep / I hear her speak to me

Hello ‘mari / How ya doin? 

I think the storm ran out of rain / The clouds are moving

Written from the perspective of his beloved mother who had passed, Kanye imagines what she would have said to him and the legacy she would have wanted him to pass on to his daughter.

I talked to God about you / He said He sent you an angel

Look at all that He gave you / You asked for one and you got two

You know I never left you / ‘Cause every road that leads to heaven’s right beside you

It rips me apart every time. Literally just now picture me, a sobbing, blubbering mess with Kanye West rapping quietly in the background. 

I don’t want to go down the rabbit hole of psychoanalyzing Kanye, the Kardashians, or any of their harmful behavior. But it would be years later that Kanye released his “gospel” album, that I found in spirituality and passion fell miles short of this one song. 

My sister had my first niece almost a year to the day after Kim had North, and though that parallel didn’t line up as perfectly (I think their pregnancies may have just overlapped), I felt this longing Kanye sings about wishing my dad was alive to meet his first grandchild. 

But that’s the beauty in that line Kanye sang, “He sent you an angel…you asked for one and you got two,” speaking to how in losing his mother and gaining his child God blessed him with some kind of a spiritual guardian as well as an earthly gift that he would need to guard as well.

While I don’t really believe in our loved ones becoming angels in the literal sense, that sentiment just encapsulates the gifts and the losses that life is all about. There is certainly no replacement for our loved ones when they leave us on earth, but there is so much more love to give and love to have when we bring new life into the world or just meet new people. The ties that bind us to those we love are never broken even if the person on the other end passes into the next life. 

It’s spring. The season of rebirth and new life and everything fresh and pretty. For me, March is the anniversary of my father’s passing, and this week I lost my grandma. 

Before I got the news I had been pondering the fact that this year would mark about half my life that I have lived without my dad. While it didn’t necessarily send me into a grief spiral thinking about him, I reflected on life and our relationships and the time we do get with those we love. It’s never enough, but there’s nothing you can do about that. You can “live each day to the fullest” and try to avoid hurting feelings and things “just in case,” but at the end of the day I think we’ll all almost always feel like we could have done more.

But reverend Kanye said 

So hear me out / hear me out

I won’t go / I won’t go

No goodbyes / No goodbyes

Just hellos / Just hellos

And when you cry / I will cry

And when you smile / I will smile

And next time / When I look in your eyes

We’ll have wings / And we’ll fly

He knows he’s gonna see his mother again. He clings fast to that faith and he knows life isn’t about trying to stay happy all the time—it’s the good and the bad. But those who love you are going to cry with you, just as they’re gonna smile with you. In the chorus he repeats a paraphrase of mother’s actual words saying “You’re not perfect but you’re not your mistakes.” 

Unfortunately by now Kanye has made so many public (and again, harmful) mistakes that it’s hard not to see him as those bad things. And again we don’t have to unpack that here, but I think it is an important lesson in humanity and empathy and forgiveness—all things that really really come in handy when we’re addressing grief and human relationships.

You can’t have the good without the bad, and we would be lost in life without its hardships. But when we hold fast to love and kindness and those who give those things to us unconditionally, it gets a lot easier.

Semantics

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Words kind of run my life as a writer. So I think about them all the time—how they work together, how they change with context, how they define all these aspects of our lives—semantics, essentially. Words carry weight, that’s undeniable. But too often we get caught up in the semantics that we start to miss the point. We can’t see the forest for the trees—we think if we call something by another name, it changes the meaning entirely, and that cannot be true.

Politically, socially, and practically I’ve lately been paying more and more attention to the way we use and manipulate words to get what we want or to get a point across. We add weight to words to make issues seem larger than they are—often to a fault. We decorate sentences with flowery language to hide something in the tangles. We act one way and speak a different way because words are disputable when actions are not. Think about the word “literally.” In an epic scene from one of my favorite shows, The Newsroom, Jane Fonda brings to light the fact that the dictionary has added a definition to the word “literally” which states that the word can mean “figuratively.” She blames the fact that people continually misused the word “literally” so much that the dictionary made the definition cater to those who used the word correctly, so now when someone says “literally” we don’t necessarily know if they mean actually or figuratively. How wild is that?

I don’t think I have a point here. Semantics is the point. Words do have meaning, but maybe keep an eye on the actions that follow the words. Don’t miss the forest for all the trees.

Age of Nonsense

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Since I was a child, I have never felt like I’ve been the right age. Part of that may be attributed to the fact that I have three older siblings, but I’ve also just always felt a bit like a misfit in my age bracket.

When I turned 14 I was eager to get my first job. In New Jersey, you can’t legally work before then, so I had previously stuck to babysitting. Everywhere I tried to apply seemed to tell me the same thing: they only hire at 16. When I was 16 I went around again with two more years of babysitting under my belt, some volunteer work, and everyone told me the same thing: they only hire at 18. Then I turned 18 and everywhere I wanted to work wanted me to have 1-2 years of experience.

Now I’m at the ripe age of 20. I’ve had a few jobs at school and when I’ve been home in the summers. I have a resume I am constantly updating and distributing. Yet I still have this nagging feeling that I’m not where I’m supposed to be. Nay, I know I’m not where I want to be.

I spent the first half of my life wondering when I was going to be old enough and now here I am wondering if I’ve earned my admittance into the twenty-something club. Maybe I’m a victim of my own generation. We have this obsession with infantilizing ourselves by calling everyday tasks “adulting” and accepting defeat as these millennial babies that no one wants near their workplace. I know I’m not a part of that. I’ve been doing my own laundry since before I could remember. I am confident that if I had a full-time job I could support and take care of myself.

The problem is I’m in the weird limbo that is college and I can’t figure out exactly what that means for me on this societal timeline. I’m supposed to have job prospects. But I’m also supposed to still be learning. I’m supposed to be getting my life together, but it’s also apparently cool to be letting it fall apart.

I’ve written before about how I don’t really believe in this concept of “wasting time,” yet here I am feeling like I’ve wasted so many years. People younger than me have incredible internships and are starting their careers and I feel like I missed my window of opportunity. Is it possible that in the blink of an eye I went from waiting to be old enough to wishing I had more time?

 

Is My Generation “Oversensitive” or Tired?

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In light of the recent events at Mizzou and other mostly college-based incidents, many people have shared the opinion that my generation (mostly current students) have become overly sensitive and are being coddled with things like “trigger warnings” and the term “hate crimes.”

Now I have long been a defender of freedom of speech. As a writer, and one whose opinions are often somewhat inflammatory, I need the first amendment to support my rights. I would even go so far as to say I am on the fence when it comes to unlimited free speech, which is essentially the concept in question as Mizzou. However, historically the line that has been drawn between things protected by freedom of speech and things not protected has been found in the concept of “clear and present danger.”

Quick history lesson: essentially, your speech cannot be limited by government action unless it involves a clear and present danger, based on the Supreme Court Ruling in Schenck vs. United States in 1919. Basically, you can’t yell “fire” in a movie theatre, unless there is a fire.

What does that have to do with my generation? The argument some are making is that free speech is too limited now because my generation is overly sensitive to things like racial slurs, cultural appropriation, and anything else that “might” be seen as discriminatory. I would agree, in some cases it has gone too far, Mizzou is not one of them. There is a difference between someone claiming or even feeling “offended” and someone feeling threatened.

We get it. You’re tired of hearing about race issues. You’re tired of hearing that black lives matter. You’re tired of someone’s name becoming a hashtag every single week, but let me tell you: people of color ar tired of living in an oppressive society. They are tired of being told that their feelings are not valid because we’re a postmodern society that doesn’t see color. They’re tired of being told that racism ended when every week another name becomes a hashtag. Another group of white students thinks it’s funny to make fun of a people that has been enslaved, marginalized, and outright disrespected in this nation from the minute they were shoved onto a boat. It’s one thing if a white friend says the n-word in a playful way. It’s not okay, but it might not cause much uproar. It is another thing to use the n-word for its original intention- to dehumanize black people. That is what is happening at Mizzou, among other real threats.

We’ve all heard of the old question, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” Today, social media is the sound. Police brutality, racist fraternities, hate crimes are not new. They have been here forever, but no one was around to tweet about it. My generation seems “oversensitive” because we’re the first generation where every single one of us has a voice online. I don’t have to try to get my name on a newspaper or spoken in the news. I type #ConcernedStudent1950 and hundreds of people see what I’m saying. Issues like this feel so loud now because they’re all around us on every website.

To say that Mizzou students are “oversensitive” is offensive. By saying this, you are contributing to the systematic racism that started the whole thing. It’s your fault. Do not tell them that their feelings are invalid because they are finally saying something about them. If fear is an invalid feeling, let me remind you that George Zimmerman got away with murder based on his “fear.”

xoxo

Kam

Reach or Throw, Don’t Go

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When I was in middle school, I volunteered as a counselor at my town’s “Safety Town,” a summer program for children entering kindergarten. The kids came in every day for two weeks to learn about everything safety, from crossing the street to avoiding strangers. I attended the program as a 5-year-old and volunteered as a preteen for four summers. I lived Safety Town.

One lesson, in particular, that has stuck with me over the years was about water safety. When someone is having trouble in a pool or drowning, we taught the kids “Reach or throw, don’t go.” This means in order to save your friend, reach out an arm or a stick of some kind to them or throw them a flotation device, DON’T GO IN AFTER THEM. The idea is that if you hop in the pool to try to save your friend, their panic will often lead to your harm.

The reason I bring up this anecdote is because I think the idea is so relevant but in terms of mental health and emotional peace. If your friend is drowning in emotional pain or stress, reach or throw, don’t go.

I have been someone who has tried to get in the water to help a friend, and I’ve seen it countless times. We as helpers get into the trouble to help our friends, and eventually we’re under so much pressure and stress to make their problems go away that they become our problems. That’s not fair, and it’s not right.

As humans, it is our instinct to help those in need. And of course, you should help your friends as much as you can, but don’t let them drown you. They won’t do it on purpose, but it will happen. Misery loves company, and it’s a burden too heavy with which to try to swim.

The missing part of the rhyme is obviously, get a lifeguard (it doesn’t rhyme so well). Lifeguards always get in the water to help people drowning, why don’t they have to follow the rule? The difference is, they are trained to do this. They have to get in the water to save people, and they know how to do it without hurting themselves. In the real world application, if you’re a trained lifeguard- therapist, psychologist, life coach- absolutely get in the water. Maybe you still shouldn’t if it is a close friend struggling, but that is up to your own discretion.

It’s hard sometimes because sometimes it seems like the person struggling doesn’t have time to wait for you to get something to reach or throw. The tide is pulling them out further and further, and you can’t reach them with this method. That doesn’t mean you have to jump in. Again, get help from a trained professional. It is not your job to save your friends. It is your job to help them as best you can, support them when they get rescued, and be there for them to make sure it doesn’t happen again. But it is not your job to go in after them. Life is hard, but we all have to live it. Reach or throw, don’t go.

xoxo,

Kam