Caribbeanfinder News Letter 10 E/D


Caribbeanfinder News Letter  10 E/D

 

 

Progress comes painfully slow in life, but it also comes by leaps and bounds.  When you search for it sometimes it’s growth can appear so insignificant that you despair.  When you’ve given up on it and moved on, you’ll glance back and realize that progress has moved on as well and left you behind.

There are times when I look at life and I feel enlightened, progressive.  I feel as if my years have granted me wisdom, or at least insight. Things that would have appeared opaque and confusing to me before are now transparent and predictable.  Other times I feel like a fossil, full of experiences, memories, and fears that no longer fit in the world around me.  As if somehow age had bestowed on me both clear sight, and blindness.

That is the way I felt the night my youngest son walked home from the movie theatre.  He caught a bus to the movie theatre late one night knowing that the bus would no longer be running at the movies end and he would have to walk 45 minutes to get back home again.

When I found out what he had done I was scared for him.  Experience had taught me the dangers posed to a young black man, walking alone at night.  He’s never had to experience that.  I worked hard to shelter him from the things that used to be so common place so that my generation’s scars wouldn’t be his inheritance.  On that night my fear led me to speak up.  I wanted him to understand the twisted world we live in, and how others may see him walking innocently and, because of their own prejudice, believe him up to no good and, because of their own suspicion, cause him harm.

He listened to my fears and my warnings, and responded with a smile.  If he worried about all of that, he told me, he would never get to see a movie.  We never did see eye to eye on that point.  After speaking with him for some time I came to realize that my words were unnecessary.  He understood the danger, but he also understood that letting the thought of a possible threat consume him would cause him to look upon people with the same suspicion that I was warning him against.  To him, progress was going to the movie.

Fast forward to this year, and the highly regrettable and unfortunate incident that happened in Sanford, Florida.  For another family, my fear from years ago, was a reality.  Their son was profiled and gun down while walking down the street.  Not because he was up to no good, but because someone thought he was.  Not because he was where he did not belong, but because someone assumed that he did not belong there.  What for me had been an incident of possible progress, was for that family, that community, and those of us who have been touched by this tragedy, a reminder that progress comes ungodly slow.

My son and I talked about the incident recently.  He went to high school in Sanford, and for that reason and others the tragedy hit close to home.  His response to it was different from mine.  Where I saw a lack of progress he saw reason to hope.  Where I saw the system failing the family because Trayvon Martin’s shooter was not arrested he did not see a system failure, he saw another tragedy.  The same way he wouldn’t hold anyone else accountable for the shooter’s action, he refused to hold the entire system accountable for the decisions of the officers at the scene.  The fact that the community could band together and cry out, the fact that the nation could hear and resonate their cry, the fact that the Governor of the state would appoint the state’s toughest on crime prosecutor to review the case and decide if charges should be filed; that to him was the system working.  In his eyes it was progress.

But the progress in this story did not come about without a lot of effort.  It took determination, perseverance, and patience.  It took prayer and hard work.  It took a divisive tragedy, and unity.  The pain of this moment has the power to both drag us back and to push us forward.  My son and I don’t always see eye to eye, but on one thing we can both agree; tomorrow is never promised.  Tragedy can strike us all at any moment.  Progress isn’t measures in the lack of tragedy.  Progress is measured in how we spend our time before tragedy strikes, and how we react after.

My heart and prayers go out to the Martin and Fulton family.  Nothing can ever bring back their lost son, but I hope they know that they are not alone.


Life Style News Letter