Hey friends,
What a time to be alive, right?! From Covid-19 taking over the world in a few months to the protests surrounding the late George Floyd's death. This has been a whirlwind of a year already and evidently overwhelming for a lot of us.
I almost feel as if I'm in a movie but this is real life! These are the things 2020 has brought in with it. This year has definitely told us to sit down and shut up because it has something to show us. With everything going on right now, I felt the need to speak up about it. I feel a need to shift my focus, as we all have felt in these trying times. So here I am taking the first step.
The first step in our lives has always been a monumental part of transformation. It's been a sign of change. Like the first step you took as a baby, or riding your bike without training wheels for the first time. Scary but necessary. It's how we learn, it's how we grow. This is necessary to me, to open up about the issues we face as a human race. To shed some light on matters that have been kept in the dark or swept under the carpet for way too long. To put my very many thoughts into words.
As you already know, I have an obsession for TED Talks and I had come across this amazing speaker and Author, Luvvie Ajayi. Watching her speak was an absolute breath of fresh air for me. She was literally speaking some of the things I thought. Which brought me to a place where I became confident enough to write this. So shout out to you, Luvvie! Keep doing what you're doing, girl!
Luvvie's talk on
"Get comfortable being uncomfortable" spoke to my soul. I mean it was like me waking up from a long slumber and realising there is so much work to do! I had created this blog site in April 2019 and published a good nothing on it until now. Why has it taken me this long to publish something? Because every time I wrote something I thought it wouldn't be good enough. Needless to say, I had been fighting the fear each time I thought about blogging. Speaking up about things had never been my strong suit. This has changed over the past 3 years.
Being enveloped by issues concerning racial injustices, gender inequality, gender abuse, are just some of the matters that have been there staring at me in the face for many years but I was too scared to say anything. Afraid of failure. Afraid what people might say about this quiet person they have all come to know. So instead I put the thought of blogging out of my mind for a while and when something I would have liked to speak about came up I told myself "there's probably someone else writing about this anyway". There are. I wasn't wrong. There are millions but they're not me. They don't perceive things in the same way I do. They don't question things that I would question. So here we are. Fighting the fear of speaking out.
There was a part in Luvvie's TED Talk that held so much weight for me. She said, "When it's time to say these hard things, I ask myself three things. One: Did you mean it? Two: Can you defend it? Three: Did you say it with love?". This resonated with my entire belief system. Hard things are meant to be spoken about. We're all going through it, so why should we be silent about what hurts us or what's hurting others? How will we know who we can speak to if we don't say anything at all? This is not the year to be silent.
I hope that as I finally embark on this journey here in this wonderful community of like-minded bloggers that I can share with you my compassion and support in your causes, in the crises that we face everyday as human beings and as God's people. To offer you some wisdom and perspective and to encourage you with love and a friendly smile.
Yours from a safe distance,
Pran
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