the length of waves

Day ten was really something special. I ventured to a warehouse space in the arts district to listen to Shaka Senghor speak. This name may not mean anything to you, as it didn’t to me just a few days prior, but after reading his story I knew it was an experience I didn’t want to miss. You see, Shaka was a convicted murderer.

Murderer is a very powerful word. The exhale that comes involuntarily at the end of it empties your breath; a little to apropos. It’s a strange thought to have to know that you’re in the same room as someone who was able to purposefully take someone else’s life. I looked him in the eye. Smiled at him. I shook his hand, avoided the open bar, and took my seat.

For the next hour and a half I listened to him speak. His words were fluid, empowering, eye opening. Throughout this hour I kept thinking about the intersections of this crime and my own personal journey. How he got to this breaking point and how I got to mine. All of which makes up the next epiphany.

 

what does a murderer look like?

Just like everyone else. Just like every person suffering from different degrees of alcoholism. Just like the person who goes to church every Sunday. The valedictorian. The drop out. There is no poster child for murderer. Shaka is funny, friendly, and the first words that came out of his mouth to me were that he “like(d) my swagger.” He is instantly loveable.

At this point I’m going to stop referring to him as a murderer. That isn’t what he is to me, though for over half of his life it has been his master status. The room is silent for most of his time speaking; you want to hold on to every word he says. When he looks out in to the faces of the crowd it feels like he’s looking in to all of our eyes simultaneously. He says he knows that we’ve all made poor decisions in life and asks us how we would feel being held hostage to those decisions forever. This causes an ache in me so deeply I close my eyes. I think about all of those abominable things I’ve done under the influence, the things locked up in secrecy, in regret. The hindsight is twenty twenty moments that I was so blinded by. What if I was held to those things and those alone? How could I ever hold my head up? Listen. I know these are very different things, but the principle is the same. Each poor decision is followed by a tidal wave of collateral consequence that we have to face. The potential that you’ll never be seen as anything else, that the essence of your entire life is now tied down to one misstep, one drunken evening, one minutes time and four pulls of a trigger. The thought is paralyzing.

Based very deeply in the removal of master status is the ability to forgive. I hadn’t really thought about it until I was typing this, but I am being a bit of a hypocrite here. The man who drove drunk and in to a crowd killing one of my closest friends nine years ago, is still just a murderer to me. I still resent him. But I don’t know anything else about him. I’ve never seen him. I’ve never heard his voice. I don’t know who he is now. Who he was then. I just know about one mistake, on one night, that affected my life forever. The removal of master status is still something that requires some mastering, but it’s achievable. The more we learn about ourselves, about others, about redemptions and regrets, the easier it is to eliminate. I’m not saying that all people deserve a second chance, but everyone does deserve a second look.

 

the modification of normal.

 

This here, this modification of normal, has me shaking my head in agreeance the entire time. Shaka takes us back to how things ended up the way they did. How his household was abusive. How he ran away at fourteen thinking that someone out there would take care of him. That people always take care of children. How after two weeks of homelessness he realized his thought process was unrealistic. How he ended up selling drugs. How his whole life shifted. How as we enter different situations our definition of normal is modified and bent. In the same way that my definition of “alcoholic” varied from year to year so that it never actually included me, people do that with their environments on a daily basis. Shaka went from running around with aced tests to running around with guns, but it wasn’t unsettling to him. Everyone else was doing it, so it wasn’t wrong. It was weird if you weren’t. He remained a product of his environment and adapted to it daily. Survival of the fittest.

We do this to ourselves. I did this to myself. I’ll just have two drinks when I’m out. I’ll just have one drink at home before the two drinks I’ll have when I’m out. We’ll just pre party here before we have the three drinks we’ll have when we’re out. I’ll just have this glass of wine. This other glass of wine. This bottle. We slowly introduce these things in to our lives and then justify them as the norm. That everyone else is doing it, too. That it is okay. That because everyone else goes out and gets plastered, there’s no harm in it. We’re all jumping off bridges here.

This is possibly the root of my discomfort at the beginning of this break from binging. That alcohol has become such the norm it almost feels weird to say no to it. To withhold from something that is just so accepted. Something that has become part of daily life and defined reasonable.

 

the redemption revolution.

 

Redemption is real. I know so because it is standing in front of me. Let me first say that my definition of redemption is lacking all of the religious aspects that people usually marry it to. To me, redemption isn’t tied to “sin” as I don’t really believe sin exists. Unless you hate pizza, in which case, a plague on your house, or apartment, or whatever you live in. Redemption, to me, is the ability to reconcile your errors, to change your life path, to redirect towards something better.

 

Shaka has done that. And it feels like I’m doing that, too.