*This letter was part of an essay I wrote for Scholars class, in answer to the question "How are you going to live your life?" This is not a comprehensive ethic for my entire life, but simply what I am asking myself to do at this time. I have posted it because there are people in the world who need to hear it.
Dear Cheyanne,
Question. Act. Live. Every day that goes by you shapes a little bit more of who you are and if you don’t take control of who that person is, you will wake up one morning and discover you are a stranger in your own bed. So, because I am you and you are me, here is what I want you to do – ask questions, of others and of yourself. Act on what you believe to be true. And take the time to enjoy living. Don’t complicate your life beyond this. For one thing, we both know you can’t handle it. For another, I don’t have the time or energy to develop an ethics like Plato or Aristotle or Jordan. You need simplicity. So just question, act and live.
Remember reading Franz Fanon and having your breath taken away by his last line? “Oh my body, always make me a man who questions” (206). Say that to yourself – ‘always make me a woman who questions’. Don’t take what others say for granted. Don’t accept the status quo. Don’t believe exactly as you are taught simply because you sat in a classroom listening to a person with a degree. Progress dies when questions are silenced! Ask the questions that need to be asked.
What’s wrong with being gay?
Why are Arabs demonized?
Can God and evolution exist together?
Might every religion hold some truth?
How can we be better people?
Don’t assume – ask. When you would give the excuse “but I thought…”, Daddy used to say “Don’t think. Check.” He was wiser than you realized. Question the answers you receive, always think for yourself and strive to understand. Do not be afraid of asking a question or receiving an answer.
I know you have been afraid in the past. Your search for God has caused you to ask questions that other people have not appreciated. You have been scorned for doubting the primary-school answers given to you. You have suffered ‘religious interventions’ by friends and concerned adults who have heard your questions and taken them as an indication of your rejection of God. I know these reactions have discouraged you from asking, from seeking. I understand. Remember, you are me and I am you. Remember, too, that Scholars and your parents are the reasons why you still believe in the Divine. Do not stop seeking with everything that you are! Believe the words in the Bible that say "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13, NIV) and believe the Bhagavad Gita when it says “If you focus your mind on me and revere me with all your heart, you will surely come to me; this I promise, because I love you” (Mitchell 195). I do not know what you will find or who you will become in this search, but do not give up.
Don’t just question others and question God – question yourself. In the rush of living, in the myriad answers and limitless information available to you in your search for truth, do not lose track of who you are; always question who it is that you are becoming. Be aware of yourself and your actions. Evaluate your character, your choices, your morality – constantly. Ask yourself who it is that you are, who you are becoming and whether that is the person you want to be. I do not know who you will be in ten years, or even five years, or two months from now; but you won’t be the person you are now. You can’t be. You are alive and, therefore, you change. Make sure those changes make you the person you want to be.
You have values and beliefs, so act on them. You believe that every human has worth and that they deserve to be treated with kindness and respect. Oppose racism, sexism, prejudice and hate. Support and advocate for those who are abused because of their skin color, their religion, their gender or the people they choose to love. Don’t just protect people; protect the other creatures that inhabit this earth, as well as the earth itself. Listen to Elizabeth Johnson when she says “We are not the center of everything. It is not all about us. Rather, we belong in the first instance as fellow creatures alongside God’s other creatures” (272). She goes on to say, “living the ecological vocation in the power of the Spirit sets us off on a great adventure of mind and heart, expanding the repertoire of our love” (286). You believe that love is an action and not a feeling, a verb and not a noun. This ‘ecological vocation’ is yours. Act on it.
If you are to act in the world, you will have to engage with it. I know this can be difficult. The images of hunger and thirst, pain and violence, hate and destruction tear you apart because you want so much for the world to be beautiful and kind, but you cannot hide yourself away and shield yourself from the ugly tragedies that occur; you may miss the beautiful miracles. The world is not static and to be a part of it you must be changing as well. Embrace the change that occurs around you and strive to create the best world possible. Be a citizen of the world, a cosmopolitan, involved in your family, your town, your country and your globe.
You will hear stories. I used to think that stories were just words, thrown together in a pretty or ugly mess, that told truths or lies or mixes of both. I never believed in the power of stories like I do now. Scholars taught me that stories can change history, change hearts. I learned to recognize the pain, the joy and the reality of life through ‘fairy-tales’ like The Odyssey, My Name is Asher Lev, Two Solitudes, and Memory of Water. The ‘true stories’ like City of Thorns and Our Story allowed me to share brief moments of life with people who existed in my own time and on the same planet. It was Thomas King who woke me up to stories. In his book The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative, he ends each story with a challenge, almost identical, but tailored to the preceding account. Here is one example: “Take Louis’s story for instance. It’s yours. Do with it what you will. Cry over it. Get angry. Forget it. But don’t say in the years to come that you would have lived your life differently if only you had heard this story. You’ve heard it now” (King 119). For all the stories you read or hear, always end with the voice of Thomas King saying, “You’ve heard it now.” Listen to stories. No, don’t just listen, seek them out and treasure them. Learn from them, not necessarily life lessons or spiritual instruction, but maybe just what the memory of “jasmine on a night in July” in Palestine smells like and what it means to a poet who has lost his home (Darwish 95). Listen to stories.
You have suffered for too many years in a darkness that makes you feel nothing. I want you to enjoy life again. Make time for family and friends, caring for them and letting them care for you. Recognize that the past cannot be changed and move forward. Stop blaming yourself for other people’s mistakes. Always learn, be proud of your femininity, live with art and accept yourself as you are.
You thrive on knowledge, on discovery, on learning. Don’t stay the same person that you are now. Today, you are better than you were four years ago and the Cheyanne of the future can only be better if you continue to learn. Plato gives the famous allegory that educating someone is like leading them out of a dark cave into the light of day (Bloom 193), but perhaps education and learning is less like a cave and more like a tunnel – it may get brighter as you walk, but you will never quite reach the end. Always seek new knowledge, always reach for something more, something deeper and further and harder to find. Be open to the changes it brings in you and take joy in those changes.
One of the most difficult changes I have ever undergone is becoming a woman. The history of women’s rights is not a clear and clean picture of progress and equality. It is a battle. Because you were born female, you were born into that battle. Not everyone chooses to fight, but you must. I am not giving you a choice in this – you are a fighter and this is your battle. Simone de Beauvoir wrote that “to explain her [woman’s] limits, we must refer to her situation and not to a mysterious essence: the future remains wide open” (750). That wide-open future is what I want for you and for every other woman I know. Fight for a future where equality is the norm, where the situation of women does not differ from the situation of men. Live your life proud to be a woman, embracing your body, your abilities and your sexuality. Do not be passive. Accept your feminine body, be confident and be happy.
Think back to Italy, when you were learning about art and beauty and when you realized how essential art is to human survival. Make a place in your life for art and continue to make art a part of you. Take time for music, dance, poetry, paintings, sculptures, theatre and novels. Give yourself the room to express through those mediums too, being patient with your creative processes (which you hardly ever do) and recognize that art doesn’t have to fit a pre-determined formula. Search for beauty in all things, whether they seem beautiful at first glance or not, including yourself. I hope that through art and the emotional healing – and challenge – it brings, you will find joy.
One last thing – I said to find beauty in yourself, even if you don’t seem beautiful at first glance. And I said to be happy; but I know how impossible this can seem. I know your struggle. I know how much work it takes to get out of bed in the morning, how much courage it takes to face people, how much energy you spend pretending to be alright. I have come to accept this part of myself and I want you to as well. I know you recall, in perfect detail, the day Grandpa died. You left class, you didn’t turn in assignments, the reading wasn’t completed and your final project, although meaningful to you, was not your best work. Your depression had begun attacking you once more and while you received condemnation from yourself for your slack academic attitude, your teachers only ever offered encouragement. They have continued to do the same during this school year, when your depression and anxiety nearly tore you to pieces. Late assignments, missed classes and unread books were met with concern rather than frustration. If Dr. McDowell, the man you admire so much, could still have faith in you, in your mind, in your worth, and if the classmates that you love so much can still love you, then you must believe that your broken mind does not have to break the rest of you. After five years of hating your inability to conquer your mental illnesses, give it up! Accept it. Depression and anxiety are a part of who you are now. You will have days when the most you can do is not enough for anyone else. But it must be enough for you. Accept yourself.
You are strong. I know you don’t feel like it because you still sit on the porch steps at night crying because you feel alone. I know you still refuse calls because you’re scared to talk on the phone. I know you still binge eat and then regret it and fast for days. I know you think you’re broken and every ‘friend’ just pities your existence so you drive them away by ignoring them and then you end up on those porch steps once again and I know that it’s a cycle you want out of but can’t escape on your own. And all of this makes you think you’re weak. You are wrong. You have always gotten up off the porch steps and that is what makes you strong.
I know you and I know that you are doing the best you can. The advice I have given is the best I can do. Perhaps one day, because you asked a certain question or did a certain thing, you will find yourself living by different guidelines. Until then, keep doing your best and, like I said, that is enough for me.
With Love, Cheyanne”
Works Cited
Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Translated by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier, Vintage Books, 2011.
Bloom, Allan, translator. The Republic of Plato. Basic Books, 1968.
Darwish, Mahmoud. Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems. Translated and edited by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forche, University of California Press, 2013.
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Translated by Richard Philcox, Grove Press, 2008.
Johnson, Elizabeth A. Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love. Bloomsbury, 2014.
King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. House of Anansi Press Inc, 2003.
Mitchell, Stephen, translator. Bhagavad Gita: A New Translation. Harmony Books, 2000.
The Bible. New Living Translation.
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| Enjoying a moment of sheer delight at the amphitheater in Delphi, Greece (2015). Photo credits go to Jenn, who also was a rock-solid support to me during the trip and who, when my grandpa died, gave me a potted plant and a list of peaceful cafes to visit when I needed time alone. She was, and is, an angel to me. |