“We Want to Matter” (part 1)
“We want to be protected and treated like we matter,” Marlene Brown, a 58-year-old Black woman, said in a New York Times article this morning in response to the Buffalo shooting this weekend. We must ask ourselves: What does it mean to matter?
I spent last week in Alamance County, North Carolina, launching a new 4-year partnership with Impact Alamance. It is a beautiful, growing county rife with racial unrest and riddled by a host of societal fault lines. Black and Brown and Indigenous people repeatedly said in group settings that they want to matter. In private, they took me aside and shared heart-wrenching personal stories of trauma and racism. Each time, they said, “Enough is enough.”
To matter means that we see and hear all people – not just those we like or who look like ourselves, who we feel comfortable with, or with whom we agree.
To matter means that we stand in spaces with people who have experienced pain and sorrow and trauma, and we listen, without judgment.
To matter means that we recognize that listening is not enough – talk alone will not get us through the challenges we face.
To matter means that we know that people both want to find healing and create a better life – never forgetting the past, but always seeking to create anew.
To matter means that we take action. We must act. And our actions must be meaningful – for false hope is our enemy.
To matter means that we build together – discovering each other’s innate capabilities and creating a shared purpose for moving forward.
At the heart wanting to matter is an urgent, burning cry from people we must hear. But first, we must stop all of our endless activity long enough to hear it. It is something so profoundly basic, so human: Dignity.
We talk a good game about dignity in our country; and yet, for so many, especially Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Asian American Pacific Islander people, among others, it is mere lip service. Dignity is not something any individual should have to seek out, wait for, or demand. Dignity is non-negotiable. It is a birthright.
To matter, is to have dignity. It is to believe that what matters to me, matters to us. It is to hold a belief that tomorrow can be better than today. It is to move from trauma and despair to healing and hope.
People throughout our country are gripped by a fight or flight response to the rancor, endless noise, hopelessness and cynicism that engulfs our lives. In Buffalo, this is especially acute today. Yet I know that a deep yearning is spreading like a positive contagion throughout our communities for us to find a more inclusive, hopeful path forward. We can do this, but only together.
There is so much I wish to engage on these and related topics, and I will in the coming weeks. But for now, I simply ask you: What does it mean to matter?