A Moment Like This.
It happened in yoga this morning at 7.30 with my teacher Haley. We were sitting in silent stillness as we always do for a few minutes before moving.
She said, “just be here.” I slowed my breathing down, closed my eyes, extended my exhalations. Hayley spoke again…”just meet the moment. The moment is what it is- meet it here.”
My eyes shot open. I set my intention to be “may I offer my practice to meet the moment” and the entire class I challenged myself to try more advanced variations of the asanas, pushed all the way against the wall of discomfort and stayed present. And like yoga always does…
it spills out into life. And now I know, that as much as I shouldn’t have to. I must. As much as I don’t want to, I will.
I don’t want to have to keep writing about this.
I would love to go back to writing about training, and motivation, and posting things that make me happy or inspire me, or encourage others.
But I can’t choke down my disappointment or anger at it all.
What’s “it all” you ask?
Talking about racism and having followers ask why I don’t post about black people killing black people.
(Here’s the answer for anyone currently reading this and wondering the same here’s why: They get arrested. They go to jail. That isn’t a problem America has.)
Or having a follower say that I’m right about my positions but that white privilege isn’t real because they personally have not experienced getting any special treatment.
Or having a black follower just today tell me that my writing is powerful but that they’d prefer that I use my pre-competiton/pre-race fierce energy and fire when it comes to these issues.
Or having another black follower tell me privately that I was right about “the house rules” but that I should consider how I can personally benefit from this current administration staying in power before using my vote for change.
Or having to explain over and over why responding to #BlackLivesMatters post with “All Lives Matters” is the type of covert but socially acceptable behavior that needs to be unlearned.
Because it’s clear as day that all lives don’t matter the same.
And the struggle is getting people who are unaffected by others’ lives not mattering the same to give a damn about that enough to help us get to the point where all of our lives do all actually matter. And matter the same.
I don’t want to have to talk about this.
Or write about this.
But come on, we’ve gotta meet the moment.
And this is the moment we are in.
I have a therapist, a life coach, a business coach, a track coach, a strength and conditioning coach, five yoga teachers, a meditation teacher, a massage therapist, a chiropractor, and a small inner circle of people I unofficially refer to as my “mastermind” group (although they might not know that I call it that) that I run my ideas by.
I’m pretty badass on my own.
But if I truly possessed on my own what was necessary to level up, I would have leveled up.
But I don’t, so I haven’t.
So at some point you’re forced to recognize that you need something different. You need more information, more skills, more resources, more help.
Because if you truly cared about making the vision for your life happen you’d find that having an attitude of “well this is how I’ve always done it.” is completely unacceptable.
If you do what you’ve always done, you get what you’ve always gotten. Period.
It’s no different than when I found myself in the Olympic final for the 100 meter dash for the first time in 2012
I knew that historically you needed to run in the 10.8s to medal.
My personal best at that time was 10.92
I went into that race confident in my preparation.
But aware of the gap between where I was, and what that moment required.
I stepped out of my own way, as I stepped back into my blocks.
I stepped into the moment and rose up to meet it.
I ran 10.85
I also lost.
Not only did I lose, I got fourth. No medal.
But I did something not many people do, I think I did something few sprinters in that final did…
took .07 hundreths off of my personal best.
Because it was required of me. That’s what that moment required.
It wasn’t headline news, it didn’t get attention, didn’t even earn me a bonus from my sponsor,
they don’t always have rewards for that.
You don’t always get credit, or acknowledgment for it.
But this where we’re at. This is another moment.
There are certain things that are required of us to rise up and meet this moment.
You might have to put together a different team, read different books, take a different approach, make new friends, frequent new places...
because it we truly had what was required to level up it would have happened.
If we truly all were doing our part to eradicate racism we’d probably be a lot further along than we are. So let’s save the “look how far we’ve come” refrain and pay attention to how much farther we need to go or...
this will keep happening…the senseless murders, the protests, the looting, the riots, the racism, the bigotry
and…because I’ll see it in my comments later if I don’t say it:
NO, I DO NOT CONDONE VIOLENCE OR LOOTING.
There, can we now go back to focusing on the illness so we can abolish the symptoms too?
Thank you.
I’m asking people of ALL races to meet this moment.
Because obviously what we’ve been doing is ineffective. Because we’re replaying this same tape over and over and over.
We’re reposting the same memes.
Singing the same hymns.
Chanting the same chants.
And having the same discussions.
Why is it so hard to understand that WE CAN’T SOLVE OUR PROBLEMS WITH THE SAME THINKING THAT CREATED THEM.
Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t say that.
Malcolm X didn’t say that.
JFK didn’t say that.
A civil rights leader didn’t say that.
ALBERT EINSTEIN SAID THAT.
So if it’s been your current thinking that racism has been eradicated in America and that George Floyd was killed by “one bad individual on a power trip” (direct quote). well, it’s obvious why and how that thinking won’t contribute to a solution.
If it’s your current thinking that stealing merchandise from and vandalizing business is the way to get the majority to shrug off indifference or apathy long enough to have our backs in our fight for equality, this isn’t a solution.
If it’s your current thinking that because you’re not racist yourself that you’re automatically actively anti-racist and that that’s enough this also isn’t contributing to a solution.
Meet the moment.
Meet THIS moment.
And if you can’t that means one of two things
you don’t want to.
Or, you need to assemble the team, gain the knowledge, develop the skill set that can help you do that.
Either way it’s time to stop kidding ourselves about where we’re at.
It’s like with my training. If I’m going to be dishonest, naive, or delusional about where I’m coming from- it’s going to be a helluva lot harder to institute an effective training program.
And my delusion will be exposed when the stadium lights come on.
Every single day I train the body I have, not the body I imagine I have. Challenging it’s limits, pushing beyond my comfort zone.
It is an exercise of humilty- to observe where you are, and to mind the gap between where you are now and where you wish to be and to act accordingly.
There is a chasm between where we are now, and the mythical promise of America.
And this is an opportunity to rise and meet this moment, with everything that’s required to do so.
You expect this of me
every
single
time
That I put on that Team USA singlet. I expect the same of you too, as my countrymen.