LARGER THAN LIFE, THIN PATHS
With technology came internet, which is basically the epitome of connectedness that was previously to inexperienced.
This interconnectedness would eventually have to be, especially for children such as myself who are literally go-betweens. I am a millennial African child of mixed tribe, if you have no experience of tribes then think mixed race. We are of mixed descent and that means we are barely ever able to fit into one tiny neat box in separation mentality. They tried, trust me they did. Growing up, I had to answer this one annoying question to a people whose tribe meant more to them than their shared nationality or race “What tribe do you belong to?”
My answer would always be the same, until I got tired of giving an answer. I would say “I am non-tribe, I’m mixed descent.” Then they would go on ahead to insist how I belong to my father’s tribe. I asked why and they gave the standard answer of ignorance “That’s just how things are. “
I hated that answer, and even now with my expanded perspective, I abhor it more. It has been the excuse given to some of the most unreasonable things Man does. It’s even more distasteful how the general public simply accepts it. Anyway, I belong to no one tribe and even the factor of race is rather questionable, seeing as how we have made it into one more segregates’ theme. At a global level, it would be that I belong to no one race. Such kids and peoples are becoming more common in these times, thanks to the global village. You can imagine, the feeling of being a drifter seems to follow you everywhere.
I am drifter in that case, never did well in groups and cliques. In fact, I stayed away from them the same way a mouse avoids cats. Like literally, I made it my job to defy the rules, lines and boxes that separate and segregate. An enigma to those living in blindness, a threat to the insecure and a kindred spirit to the wild and free spirits. We all, those who consider themselves #woke, have personal journeys and experiences. Meeting more of my kind has caused bursting open of limited perspectives: in our world anything goes. There is no good or bad way of doing things, no right or wrong way of being …there is just a path to be intentionally walked.
Recently, I however find myself deeply disturbed by the ‘rebellious’ label that has been used on me enough times. Even I sometimes refer to myself as a rebel and it is true to an extent that I am. Being born a drifter causes one to ask the questions many would otherwise ignore. But am I really, a rebel? And if so, what makes it a bad thing? I know what I am against and not for, that is separation mentality in all its forms. I believe in co-existence because I was born a physical embodiment of it.
Forget not that being a millennial, I was born where millennia met and the achievements of one world become the seeds of another one. Even now, we are witnessing the unprecedented changes in the consciousness of Man. We are seeing so much ‘impossibility’ manifest, so how dare we say ‘I can’t’? Really …
Home for me never was a space shared with blood relatives but now is a state of existence. I am not sorry for stating that my father’s house never felt like home. In fact that very house was the place where my core wounds were inflicted and festered into distrust, feelings of unworthiness and inadequacy, cycles of rejection and despair. Until I had had enough and would not walk another mile in those shoes: healing begun. Definitions changed, perspectives shifted. Family stopped being a matter of blood but rather alignment. Love stopped being about tolerance but acceptance. And even though blood relations are important, their approval and validation were never necessary to survive and now thrive. In spite of sharing roots, somehow we never seem to share views; even now I feel alien in my father’s house but no longer in my skin.
The world is just a reflection of this experience, how people who refuse and cannot even fit into any one neat box are mildly rejected, harshly dejected or blindly tolerated. Even as the interconnectedness grows, those who have no labels are fighting a battle to have our places and space. How I have long searched for a physical home, a place where my wholeness is at peace. I found it amongst my kind, the so called rebels of today’s society.
Those preoccupied with the artistic, creative and expressive; those who let their hair grow out long or locked; those who will not stop to sing about mental slavery and emotional colonialism; those who dress up feminism as equity and not a call for revenge; those need no spouses but love still; those who speak on the taboos and call out hypocrisy; those who limit not the Creator to a manmade temple but act like the temple itself. These are my kinds, those who will not be contained by race, gender, caste, religion, political preference, sexuality or careers. We fight a war programmed into Man himself, even the Man who created a global village yet fights those not like him.
