There’s a lot to listen to and learn from in this interview with adrienne maree brown:
We’ve been trained to be afraid of our own yes, and what feels good in our lives. Get curious about that. Who benefits from you being terrified to be happy? As long as you’re afraid to be happy, you’ll not pursue the very things that would require the system to change, require the system to accommodate everyone’s joy, instead of just the joy of a few rich people at the top. That kind of systems change is of deep interest to me.
We have relationships and accountability to the kinds of stories we tell. Art is either upholding the status quo, or disrupting the status quo. Class, race, gender, sexism, nationalism, militarism… the toxic energies of our time want to come through us. They want to come out. They need to be rewritten, and we have to be conscious about how that happens, so that we’re not writing the same narrative.
There’s always going to be a part of me that’s laughing at my own earnestness, so considering my own insignificance always makes me laugh and helps me relax. Everyone’s like, ‘Am I doing enough? Can I do more? Does my life matter? Do people like me?’ I think I do my best work when I’m not concerned about how it’s going to be received, and when I’m really in touch with what I feel is the most true part myself.
Humans have done so much to make ourselves still and rigid and routine, and some people get comfort from that. I guess, as a Virgo, I’m supposed to be comforted by that! But I enjoy routines, as long as I know I can change them whenever I want. The harder truth that you have to get in contact with as a human being is that you don’t know for sure. Everything we’re doing is our best-case scenario, best hypothesis. Since I can’t guarantee that in the future it will be impactful, what I try to do is live each day as if I’m in that future. Like, I want to live in a world where nobody was lying to each other, and we said exactly what we were feeling and thinking with as much kindness as possible. Then I did that, and got much different results than I’ve ever gotten from like, lying, or just being polite.