On Becoming More Powerful (Part I)

Here is a poem I wrote a few weeks after the quarantine started:

The insecurity

The questions

The fear

The doubt

The paralysis

The inaction

The despondency

The roundabout

The frustration

And confusion

Not knowing who to listen to

The confinement

The boredom

The temptation to break the rules

The aloneness

The isolation

The lack of human touch

The distracting

The pretending

Staying busy doing stuff

The cleaning

The fixing

The do-it-yourself projects

Having fun

Entertaining the kids

Then wondering what to do next

The overeating

And binging

On the greatest TV shows

The napping

The daydreaming

And pondering whether time has slowed

The praying

The laughing

Staying inspired and strong within

Reconnecting

And building

And reaching out and checking in

All the while just waiting

For someone to give us the go

To inform us that we can return to living

The lives we used to know...

After I read the finished poem, I thought it sounded too nice. Too pretty, in fact. Too easy to be misinterpreted as a clever arrangement of words and emotions that pretty accurately captures the sentiments of the masses at the onset of the shut in period. But this was not the full intent. There was a message towards the end that I didn’t want to get lost—so I attached it in the title: Waiting without Power: My Critique of Staying Home. Still not enough for me… so I am writing more here.

I think my biggest problem with this quarantine is the waiting. Waiting for someone else to tell us when we can "live" again. And while I was rather comfortably waiting, I overheard a news reporter say something that not only made me cringe, it made me question whether or not I was focusing on the right things while I waited. This is what the reporter said:

“Most Americans are enjoying their freedom this weekend; freedom they could lose again, if they don’t follow the rules.”

I don’t know if this struck me so because I am an African-American or because I am American, but it really really bothered me.

I, like every other person, am happy America and is making efforts to protect her citizens (to the degree that I believe it). I am not, however, fool enough to believe that the above-mentioned statement is one made from the spirit of protection; nor am I uninformed enough to believe it is made from a place of syntactic error and misjudgment on the part of whoever wrote the script.

Hearing these words struck a chord of great concern with me; and ultimately verified what I have been suspecting for some time now. This quarantine is NOT about protecting citizens or stopping the spread of the virus. It is about accumulating power. It is about how much control the government can have over its citizens without objection.

I sincerely believe that 2020 is a powerful year. It is a year of transition—a year where we the PEOPLE have access to the GOD-given powers with which we were born. World governments are colluding together to stifle this real life coming of age/ reclamation story. Instead of us arriving at the knowledge of our power, we are being consumed with fear and distracted by the barrage of news reports about the corona virus, the Coronavirus Disease, COVID-19 or whatever else it will be changed to in the future.

I am interested in power. My power. The power I have been growing into more and more since my quantum leap year- The power that much of humanity is here to make sure we get. Want to explore that with me? Cool. Let's go!