If we long for our nation to be racially united, we will have to commit to letting go of what is petty.
We will need to choose not to be consumed or taken off track by things that are not the main thing, or we will never be able to get to the heart of the issues.
We can discipline ourselves, flick it out of our minds, and move on. I physically press my pointer finger against my thumb and flick the petty away, choosing not to give oxygen or mental space to things that don’t deserve attention at this point in the conversation.
Petty is often tied with pride. It causes us to put too much emphasis on trivial things. When we commit to not doing petty, we set the precedent of humility, where our hearts can let things pass and stay centered. We refuse to get upset and off-track, and choose to focus on the more significant issues with a willingness to consider something that may be trivial now, later.
As we work towards understanding, we are going to have missteps, places where we get it wrong, things we each say that don’t come across quite right, and biases we don’t see as such, yet.
When a petty situation threatens to push you off the journey, flick it off the cliff. Refuse to give it the attention it does not deserve. Name it petty and walk away free.
We are going to have to flick some things to the side if we want to understand each other. We will hear things that may turn into impasses if we don’t flick them to the side for now. When I first started reading Latasha Morrison’s book, Be the Bridge, near the beginning of the book Christopher Columbus Day was questioned. My first inclination was to question if that was the place to start and stop reading, but I had to decide my leaning in, listening, learning and hearing wasn’t going to stop because I was going to choose the starting point over listening. So I chose to flick away my preference because I wanted to understand Latasha’s why and in the listening, I came a little closer to understanding.
If we want to come together in understanding to learn to hear and see, we are going to have to flick away some weeds so we don’t get caught up in them. Let’s call the little things petty. Let’s commit to returning to them once we have journeyed down the path towards understanding, but let’s not get so caught up in what at this point is trivial that we stop listening.
We are watching a story unfold, and we can be part of a better world in that unfolding. We are going to have to call some things petty. We are going to have to flick them away, or they will capture our gaze and clog the conversation, and this is no time for that.
HLLF,
