Hosting Hostility?

Every time I open my virtual door there is conflict, confusion and chaos.

If it were a natural environment (rather than virtual), I'd put my house on the market..,. I'd want to get away. It's part of the reason why I don't watch the news, but I do keep my ears open for what's going on, especially as it relates to me and mine.

I like getting home from work and unwinding. I like having some time to recharge, have some quiet and tranquillity. In short I like peace.

It feels good when the mental faculties can be rested and when you can be at ease. Even neuroscience and biology teach us that these states of being are good for us.

However, the current climate seems to be whipping us into a frenzy. Every day there is some story, event or issue that we seem to be thrown. Like the raw meat thrown to lions, something is delivered up and the civilised-nation gives way to something very different. That is not to trivialize or make light of any of the current dilemmas and issues that we face.

However, what these daily offerings are pulling out of us is what is concerning. Any hostility regardless of who creates it or who hosts it, creates hostility for all those living in that environment.

I have witnessed and experienced hostility. The current hot topic, racism, prejudice, racial profiling.

The subject was touched on in Marvel's Luke Cage. Set in Harlem, there is a scene where Luke and his girlfriend are having a heated argument, and she is confronting him for succumbing to aggression for trying to achieve his ends.

He counters her argument by talking about how he has tried to do things the right way and follow the rules, law etc. She tells him that he is using that as an excuse and that he has anger issues that he needs to resolve, notably with his clergyman father.

"he has anger issues that he needs to resolve"

He proceeds to tell her about all his trials and tribulations, being wrongfully accused, arrested and imprisoned, and then he opens up a small window into his psyche and we see what is familiar for a lot of black men, including this one. He talks about being in the lift and the person clinging a little more tightly to their handbag. He talks about walking down the road and someone crossing over to the other side.

In effect he (the hoody wearing, good doer) is talking about his lived experience. It is not blatant, overt racism, but it is the prejudged experience of many a blackmail, I mean black male... sorry.

Luke is tired, and it does get tiring, having to go out of your way to somehow convey that you are not a threat. That you are really a nice person, or maybe just a normal person.

"it does get tiring, having to go out of your way to somehow convey that you are not a threat"

There are nuances in the experience, which are very subtle and slight, they would go as unnoticed as the stuff that happens in a classroom where you find a student in tears and eventually discovered that a whole 'soap-like' series of events have happened right there in the classroom, right under your nose as you taught the class.

It is things like, when you are in a queue and see others greeted warmly, whilst you get a stern 'Yes?' It is things like when you are queuing for an ATM and find people looking over their shoulders, whilst you find people virtually breathing down your neck when the shoe is on the other foot.

It is things like, the many times when you are at some collective, usually work type gathering and find yourself like the kid in the playground hoping to be put out of your misery and get picked. It is a lived experience, a what's all the fuss about, poor you, here's a violin experience, which except you have lived you understand it not. It is an heavy laden, emotionally charged experience, which is still not resolved, only regurgitated.

Luke's experience concludes with a type of compromise. A compromising with the uneasy balance of aggression, that serves a purpose. Doing the wrong thing, or at least the questionable thing, but for the right reasons. The end justified the means method.

Into this hostile environment I look, but I see something different. I have no superhero power dilemma to battle with, only the life I have been given.

With it I must find what resonates with me. Will I become a product of this environment, where I begin to mirror what I see?

What good will that do, and what end will that serve?

Have I got some issues with anger? Do I have a right to? Have I had, or more accurately, do I experience some of those things mentioned as above? Does my community and kin have those factors to deal with? Yes. But...

Personally, rejection and reproach have been consistent companions on the journey. Thankfully, goodness and mercy were been never far behind.

And so, the environment will not dictate to me

I will not play host to hostility. I am not a hostili-tree, so it will not produce any fruit through me. I'm not trading it for my tranquillity.

Dr Kings words live in me - I will stick with love, hate is too great a burden to bear.

So, my response is more love - carrying more for those who lack it, smile more, be kind more, let down my own guard more

I ought to recognise the words of a Birmingham based bishop here, who taught in his pre - New Year message about a little known word, with huge ramifications.

The word was xenodochial - the definition is from the Greek language, meaning "friendly to strangers," When he spoke about that word, I saw in myself an anger, a fierceness, as he expounded and I took the message to heart.

The bible talks about entertaining angels, unawares, as was the case many a time in the old testament.

But irrespective, and maybe more importantly (of whether I encounter a divine being, or not) I am going out of my way to treat my fellow human beings, with warmth at the very least, seeing as we all have to live down here in this (hostile) environment together.

And the final words are those of another King, that King from L.A, Rodney...

"Why can't we all just get along?"..