How We Make 2021 Mean Something More
What does Mental Health Awareness and our "2020 Revelations" have in common? They're not enough!
As many have already quipped in their own way of words: Just like American governance for most of the year, the ball was dropped once again a few nights ago. But as we cautiously and exhaustedly trod through the door between 2020 and 2021, and as everyone cycles through their “best of 2020” / “worst of 2020” highlight reels, I can’t help but reflect on the fundamentally weird nature of how we have confronted and understood the year’s events. How we seemed to have felt so intimately connected with one another earlier on – for just a moment in time. The way that deep flaws of our society were supposedly “revealed” to us. And actually how all this was very much not a universal experience and how the “we” in question for all this signifies a lot of different things.
Interestingly, the “we” is not just an identity, or signifier of who belongs. It also represents a set of narratives and practices that people take on. What makes up the “we”? What are some of the “we’s” that were intensified or even created? How is all this even related?
There’s the “objective we” that often pervades how stories are conventionally presented, prioritizing specific perspectives instead of cultivating observation through a more comprehensive lens. As journalist Wesley Lowery describes:
“[T]he mainstream has allowed what it considers objective truth to be decided almost exclusively by white reporters and their mostly white bosses. And those selective truths have been calibrated to avoid offending the sensibilities of white readers...The views and inclinations of whiteness are accepted as the objective neutral. When black and brown reporters and editors challenge those conventions, it’s not uncommon for them to be pushed out, reprimanded or robbed of new opportunities.
There’s also the “we” brought out through our verbal codes. Coping mechanisms and shrugging euphemisms that foster what amounts to Genteel Crisis Water Cooler Banter. I’m SO done with 2020. What a year, am I right? Hah, better luck next year America! Hollow fillers that allow one to superficially answer “How are you doing?” with: “Well! I’m okay, considering...” *wildly gestures towards everything.*
One “we” has been fostered, inevitably, through capitalism’s embrace. Advertisements and billboards and email campaigns reminding us that Amazon and Chevrolet and Disney all acknowledge how unprecedented these times are. And that, even in these uncertain and precarious times, our dollar still counts just as much. How poignant. Our favorite corporations stringing together solidarity-through-the-market in the face of bleak governance, as if tying a frayed net below trapeze artists during the world’s deadliest circus. A display of complete clownery–from the ringmaster on down to the jesters tasked with keeping the audience occupied amid the chaos of the show.
And “we”? We find our roles blurring between the audience being subdued by the circus performers, and the discombobulated jesters & trapeze artists tasked with maintaining a hold on the audience. We are absorbed in what the Grandmaster presents, and also play our own role in sustaining the circus. This Cirque du Soul-less lends itself useful to considering a dynamic that has brought about a “we” that shares characteristics from all the above: our 2020 “revelations.”
“COVID-19 Has Revealed X.” “The Black Lives Matter Protests Have Shined A Light On America’s Dark History Doing A, B, and C.” “The Government’s Inability To Do Y Highlights Z.” Et cetera.
One problem with this form – one I am definitely guilty of having perpetrated before – is that the issue being revealed was likely known by someone. But this form presents a story or discovery as a universal revelation, without really describing for whom the revelation is for. The revealer removes their own persona from the revealing. Why does that matter? Because this erases an innate feature of any revelation itself – why it needed to be revealed to the observer in the first place. In removing oneself from a revelation, it is as if the revelation is being made from some omnipresent third party, an objective lens we all could see reality through. So by obfuscating the subjective human relationship with learning, and erasing a primary feature of a revelation – why something had to be revealed in the first place – this “objective” sense of revelation is dubious.
I’m reminded of how often I would come across someone on Twitter or Facebook sharing a news story that, albeit may not have been on everyone’s immediate mind, was surely still gaining recognition in some way (otherwise how would they have found a news story covering the issue in the first place?). And the person would ask, almost always in all caps, “WHY IS NOBODY TALKING ABOUT THIS?!””
We can readily point to a myriad of reasons why certain facts or ideas are less immediately known to people. Some are expertly delineated by Wesley Lowery in his aforementioned piece. Some have to do with where we get our information from, or how that information is disseminated (a la social media giants, public schools with divergent curriculums in all fifty states, etc.). These and other items all warrant their own discussions. For the sake of keeping this exploration grounded, it’s worth considering why revelation often seems more concerned with the idea itself rather than a subsequent change of narrative or practice. It’s constantly about “awareness,” but at what point does being “aware” mean anything?
We in this country have an interesting relationship with “awareness.” Consider Mental Health Awareness Month, which began in 1949. Notably, much of Mental Health Awareness Month focuses on, well, “awareness” (what exactly we are to be aware of is sometimes ill-defined). And sure, some of the corporate or political programs dedicated towards “Mental Health Awareness” very well may have items attached to them that claim to provide material support to people, beyond simply “raising awareness.” However, that the popular dialogue appears largely limited to these superficial terms reflects a shortcoming on the side of we the public to meaningfully engage in changing our narratives and practices surrounding these issues.
What does this gap mean materially? Well, does a month full of ribbon-clad “awareness” profile photos meaningfully alter how we live our lives? Do masses of us go on to more intimately and generously interact with our fellow human beings – whether or not we held a previous connection before? Do we actively offer space for others to speak to their anxieties or fears? Importantly, do we identify what structural forces are at play that contribute to mental struggles in the first place? Do we move beyond simple platitudes of “ask people how they’re doing,” to more deeply interrogate why people around us are feeling the way they are?
After all, mental illness is not just some abstract “it can happen to anyone” disposition that popular discourse can seemingly make it out to be – it is explicitly political. Consider what else mental well-being is, beyond ideas like “spreading awareness” or “overcoming the stigma”: it involves affordable housing, economic stability, physical well-being & access to wellness activities, equitable human and medical services, spiritual and personal peace, cultural and gendered attitudes, among countless other factors. All these are facets of life impacted by history and politics – by our shared culture and society, and thus our own individual behaviors. Do the mass of people who at some level “celebrate” Mental Health Awareness Month also grapple with these fundamental factors – and what role we each play in relation to them?
In tandem, we can surmise why the supposed revelations of 2020 are no promise of progress. In the case of mental health, someone is either personally aware of how these factors can impact a person’s well-being, or these dynamics are “revealed” to them. And if these factors are revelations for someone, that means there is a reason why they had to be revealed to them in the first place. Perhaps these factors are not ones that impact them personally in the same way they impact others. Regardless, if they as the revealer do not experience these factors in the same way as another, it requires that much more explicit reckoning with their revelation to feel empathy and cause for genuine change – whether that be a change in how they practice mental well-being, support the well-being of others, or at a deeper level, how they challenge the structures that produce these factors in the first place.
So if we experience 2020’s revelations in the same manner many of us traditionally engage with Mental Health Awareness Month, we will likely waste the moment to bring about changes in our personal and collective narratives & practices. Moreover, we may degrade our own humanity by not recognizing the debilitation our shared humanity has sustained.
Nearly a year ago, we were confronted with a moment that made many of us question where we would be in months time – if we would be in months time. Some felt a sense that we had fostered a collective emotion in the air – shared anxieties, hopes, and dreams. Months have passed since that initial ostensible shared moment. Those of us reading these words have made it thus far. Some – at least 350,000 in America, and nearly 2 million across the globe – have not.
What is our relationship with the anxieties, hopes, and dreams of those we have lost? If some of their emotions were truly grounded in a shared link with our own emotions, is this link now disjointed? The dead lose their lives as we know it. We the living lose a component of ourselves too – the portion of us that shared anxieties, hopes, and dreams with those we lost. This loss is only magnified with the awareness that so much of the loss did not have to happen. In this way, we lose a sense of our spiritual, interconnected humanity – but also a sense of our personal humanity in being conditioned to this overwhelming loss.
Awareness of issues alone does not lead us to change our narratives and practices, confront our conventions that may have allowed those issues to arise in the first place. Therefore, awareness with no engagement in fact leaves the path open to further pain, suffering, and loss.
And the cycle continues: anguish, awareness, anguish, awareness. Revelations, rinse and repeat. One begets the other.
What do we do? We return to the “we.”
We are tasked with defining the “we.” And this definition is not simply a question of who makes up the “we,” but rather what narratives and practices the “we” will aspire towards. And if we can fill the “we” with each part of ourselves, and each part of what we have lost – if we can sustain our feelings of shared humanity – our revelations might lead us to transcend these cycles of awareness and anguish.
If we can connect what is and what was, we will be able to define and reach what can be.
Happy New Year. May we make this an active, beautiful, and powerful one. Day by day.
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