Four years ago was memorable. For me, the summer of 2020 is a timestamp. What I remember was the intense feeling of anger, disbelief, and separation when it came to news and information.

I reference a book in today’s excerpt that really helped me expand my thinking and understanding of how ‘stories’ can override day, and unintentionally perpetuate limiting social narratives that affect everyone.

How to be an Antiracist was just one book. The author, Ibram Kendi, is politicized and the book is on a banned list (I think). On that note, I often reference Brene Brown, and am relistening to her book Dare to Lead. I’m certain she is politicized as she has been/is outspoken with her views. She took a year off from social media, and it might have tamed things down. Unsure.

I mention this because I can recognize the impulse to cancel and categorize. I was quite familiar with the impulse in the summer of 2020.

Speaking of ‘canceling’, Trevor Noah has some thought provoking comments on a recent podcast in conversation about the assassination attempt on the former president. I had several important takeaways, one being to focus on issues not personality traits. The other was a connection. Trevor shared that the ’cause’ or ‘problem’ is so much deeper than what is considered to have happened on the surface. My connection was back in 1999, and the catalyst to my content and passion for social-emotional wellbeing (which also might be a politicized term?). When the school shootings happened, I knew all the surface problem spotting was not where the issue lived. The issue is so much deeper. Disruption needs to happen at ‘the scratch’, not be ignored until it surfaces as death. ‘We’ all know this. Yet, ‘we’ collectively react and look to extreme media to tell us how to think. (I highlight ‘we’ because I know this is part of the problem, to assume a generalized consensus)

Here’s the excerpt from July 21, 2020.

I feel differently within then I did four years ago. Thank goodness. I have compassion for the recent shooting (it wasn’t as immediate as I would have liked, but it landed, thank goodness), I am curious why there has been little said that a man was killed, as well as a twenty year old. Trevor’s conversation has me thinking about issues and what America could look like. I value love, belonging, and inclusivity. I like what Simon Sinek shares in his book Infinite Game, about the scrappy colonists who wanted equal representation. The scrappy colonists are the majority in 2024. Same story. All humans. Born with unalienable rights. Life. Liberty. Pursuit of happiness.

What future was projected for the twenty year old? How could it be different? What if most (65%) of the people imagined a world through a filter of love and shared humanity, and then moved toward that desired outcome.

Four years is long time to hold on to a heightened intensity of anger, disbelief, and separation.

There’s got to be something more.

What are you pulled toward? Why? And then what?

Something More. Connecting to the pulse of a Shared Humanity by Sally Seiffer