July 23, 2020
Today I went to the Robert E. Lee statue that stands in the capitol of my home state of Virginia.
A wooden sign, painted green and yellow, states: "Welcome to Beautiful Marcus-David Peters Circle: Liberated by The People MMXX". Marcus-David Peters was a science teacher in Tappahannock, Virginia near my hometown. Two years ago, he was killed by police while experiencing a mental health crisis. He was naked and unarmed.
Encircling the statue are images and stories of Black people killed by police: Amadou Diallo, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Breonna Taylor -- a circle that begs to be broken. Their placement is thoughtful: identical design, laminated, evenly spaced. Like the1890 statue of Lee, they are an intentional act of memorialization. Unlike the Lee statue's first 100 years, this piece has already evolved - other stories have been inserted - marker on cardboard, printer paper, poster board. Names I didn't recognize - horrors held only by families and loved ones. Until now.
There was joy too. An elder slowed her car and waved to a group of young people who'd set up a grill and a few tents covered in BLM signs. "God bless you...Be safe!". They replied, "We will! Thank you!". A White parent brought her children. They held BLM posters and left notes at the base of the statue. The shape of the traffic circle draws the visitor to circumnavigate the scene on foot, an odd mandala. A Black woman completed the circle, turned to leave. Then she paused, turned back toward Lee, and did a cartwheel.
This transfiguration - a Confederate monument into a living memorial to Black pain and Black joy -- happened after decades of obstruction by White conservatives and moderates alike. And activists accomplished it in a matter of days. It made me think of punctuated equilibrium, the theory in evolutionary science that a species will experience long periods of stasis -- decades or centuries -- interspersed with periods of quick, dramatic change. Applied to social movements, it means, "change comes very, very slowly. And then really fast."
As a therapist and a coach, I spend most of my time thinking about change, and what stops it. The truth is, we've organized our lives to survive the "long period of stasis". Now that we're in a period of quick, dramatic change, I'm interested in hearing how you're holding up. What rituals, what practices, are keeping you in this?
I've come to believe that it's helpful to connect to routines that have always kept you grounded during periods of change. But since we're experiencing something that is bigger than what most of us have lived through, it's time for new rituals too. One of the oldest founding text of the yoga practice, the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, date back to 500-200 BCE in the Indus River Valley - now called "India" - an area that has its own history of centuries of colonialism, followed by rapid change. The 14th sutra defines a practice as something that is:
(1) done for a long time
(2.) without break
(3.) with earnest devotion.
With those three things, "a practice can become a firmly rooted, stable, solid foundation."
What are some of your new practices? How are they helping you grow new roots? What new routines are giving you a sense of stability even as we move through rapid change?