Mini-Episode: Acceptance as Ground

Join Prentis for their first mini-episode. They are sharing their thoughts on how to accept the reality of our world right now, so that we can move with our fear towards presence and action.

Watch the full video episode and join the conversation on Patreon @Prentishemphill 

Transcript

Hey, y'all. Welcome to Becoming the People. This is our first mini episode. And if you don't know what that is, neither do I, really.

We're trying this thing out, basically, where every other episode, it's just going to be me for a shorter episode, just talking about what's on my mind, what's on my heart, what I'm seeing out in the world. We're going to call these mini-episodes. We're also going to do a little bit of reflection on the previous episode, the episode that just came out before this, our guest episodes that we have with so many incredible guests already lined up this season. But we're going to have these mini-episodes as a digestive space for those bigger episodes.

It's a space for me to just riff a little bit because one of the main things we heard in feedback over the years is people saying, well, Prentis, we'd like to hear a little bit more from you. People have appreciated that, you know, this is a podcast. We really let guests speak. It's really important for me to give space for people to lay out their ideas.

And yes, I might disagree or I might full heartedly agree and feel so moved, but I want people to be able to lay out their kind of vision for what it means for us to become the people of this time. So I really try to give guests space to speak. But one thing I've heard from a lot of people is that there's there's not enough of me in the episode. So I'm taking that to heart.

And I'm taking it as a challenge, honestly, because I am, believe it or not, this might be very apparent, it's one of those things where people are like, yeah, I could already see that. But I'm, I don't know if shy is the right word, but something adjacent to shy. It is not the easiest for me to sit in front of a camera and just talk about how I feel, but it is something that feels like a right size challenge for me to figure out how to just be myself with you all a little bit more because that's that's actually what I really long to do.

So this will be this will be a learning and exercise I'm sure it will evolve over time as I get a little bit more comfortable and more clear on the format but this is these are mini episodes so that you have something also each week that you can process or use. Hopefully these will be useful to you. We want people to have something every week to kind of chew on that's not just a guest episode.

So welcome to the first mini episode of all time on the Becoming the People podcast. And I want to do a few things in conversation with you all today. One, I just want to give a shout out to the Patreon, because if you want to continue this conversation with other people, if you want to ask questions that I might incorporate into a mini episode, please head over to the Patreon, become a part of that conversation that we're having over there.

And you never know what you share might end up on the podcast, might end up being a topic of conversation for the mini episode. So that's one thing I just want to alert people to. And the other thing I just want to say is like, this is the start of the year. It's mid-January when I'm recording this.

It's going to come out just a few days later. But it has already been a hell of a year. And I mean a hell of a year already. It has been a hell of a year.

And there's so much I could say and so much I could talk about. You know, one thing I don't really want to do on this podcast, I'm not going to get into every particularity on the politics of world events. I'm also not going to, this is certainly not a partisan podcast. The party game is really not my thing.

I will speak to it sometimes, but that's not really what I'm here for. What I'm here for really is what's happening in the collective. How are we feeling? How are we doing overall?

And how can we keep, you know, even as things are piling on, even as the world gets really, really heavy, what are some of the things we can be doing or paying attention to? that keep us in the game, that keep us in life, that keep us connected to each other. So those are the things that I really want to be considering in this space that we have together. So there's a couple of things I've just been rolling around just in the last couple of weeks with everything that's been happening.

I'll say specifically things that have been happening in Venezuela, the US takeover and the removal of Maduro as a president. The U.S. commitment to taking over the Venezuelan government for an indefinite period of time and to extracting oil, all of that has been clearly stated. ICE's invasion of Minneapolis, amongst many other cities, but Minneapolis in particular, the intensity of ICE patrolling the streets, picking up people, disappearing people. And also recently, the shooting, the murder of Renee Good, who's seemingly an activist, definitely a partner and a mother and a community member, committed community member, who was shot shot dead in the street on on video and um yeah i think there's a way that the last couple

weeks have felt and again to the collective shocking you know it's been a shocking couple of weeks and it's been shocking because i mean for many reasons also i i just want to note um By the time this comes out, I actually don't know what will have happened in Iran, but there's so much happening around the uprisings in Iran right now and the potential for more U.S. bombing and intervention, so I'll just put that there. Actually, I anticipate something else will happen in the next couple days, but it has not happened at the time of this recording, so I just didn't want to forget that as I was speaking, but It's been a time of incredible shock and fear. And, you know, I like to talk about fear a lot, not to instill it in people, but to acknowledge the existence of fear as something that we have to work with and contend with, because a lot of us don't want to be afraid or we don't want to

acknowledge our fear. I think a lot of that comes from the culture that we're embedded in. We don't want to say that we're afraid. It's a weakness, quote unquote.

But I think a lot of us are afraid. And fear functions in particular ways that I think it's important for us to understand so that we might, not just as individuals, but as a community, be responsive to that kind of the role fear is playing in how we, one, perceive what's happening, how we relate to what's happening. Maybe our immobilization, that's one of the things I want to talk about.

is because I've been going around this last year and I've spoken at a lot of organizations, I've spoken at a lot of universities, I've spoken to a lot of incredible people. I have met so, so, so, so many incredible, loving, committed people. And what I'm about to say is not universal to those people, but it is something that I have witnessed, which is that A lot of people are operating, in my opinion, and this isn't like a diagnosis, but in my opinion, from a functional freeze. this moment are kind of functionally frozen, are able to go about their days, go about their work, take care of their kids, engage in conversation with their family.

But on some level, there's a deep immobilization around action that actually addresses the thing that is causing them to be in a functional freeze. There's a there's a deep immobilization. And I'm saying that because I'm going to so many places and a lot of what a lot of the feedback I get, maybe people are surprised somehow, you know, People see you on social media and they project a personality onto you or imagine you're a certain way. But if I give a speech or give a talk, one of the main pieces of feedback I get is, wow, that was so intense.

Oh, you're so intense. And yes, I guess I am intense. I have been intense my whole life. You can ask my mom, you can ask my family.

I'm kind of intense, but I'm also irreverent. You know, it's like I feel the heaviness of life, but I also know that everything we're experiencing is finite. And so there's a way that I can hold it with a lightness too. And sometimes I want people to feel that lightness in me too.

It's like everything is heavy and light. But I keep getting that feedback of like, this was an intense speech or this felt really intense. And part of the way I interpret that and the way people say it to me is that in a lot of these places that I go, a lot of these conferences or, you know, whatever gathering it might be, there are a lot of people that are trying to hold on to a very recent past.

But the idea that we're going to return to something recognizable in that recent past, and I can't tell exactly which era people are wanting to return to if it's like, you know, end of Obama's term. I don't know what it is, but there's like a, there's a desire to return to something and a sense of like, if we can just get a hold of the reins here, we can fold it back and we can get back to what we were doing in the path that we were on. And I think one of the things that I've been going around saying is a little bit of a wake up call, but you know, it's really just my opinion and what do I know?

But my sense is that we're not going back. And I don't mean that in the Kamala Harris way. It just occurred to me what that sounded like. I don't mean that we're just not going back to the right's imagined past.

I don't think we're going back to anybody's imagined past. I don't think any of those pasts are available to us. And I kind of believe that the sooner we understand that, the sooner we face that, the better equipped we will be to address what is actually in front of us. And, you know, I think there's a lot of good reasons why people don't want to let that go.

I mean, it gives us something to work towards, something to orient around. If we can just get back there, we can get back on track. But I think we have to kind of soberly look at what's been broken, dismantled, not just in terms of the levers of our government, but in terms of social contracts, social norms inside of the US, but also international relations. Like what has actually been fractured to a point that it's not just something that can be recovered easily or quickly that there's actually going to be, you know, if you ever had an argument with somebody and they said something or you said something, let's bring in even more

home, but you said something totally out of pocket. And then you want to, when you realize it, you realize you said something out of pocket, but you don't actually want to be accountable to it, but you realize that you need to show up in a different way. So you go, okay, well, let's just put that back there and let's just address what's here now. What do you want to talk about?

There's that. kind of impulse. And you actually can't get there without rebuilding trust. You actually can't get there without rebuilding certain parts of the relationship that got fractured in whatever you were going through or whatever was said.

You can't just skip over it. You can't skip over that part. That's why I don't think we simply go back. So there's this piece that I keep coming back to, which is like, how do we accept what is?

How do we accept what is? And I know that even as I say that, some people are like, I'm not going to accept what is. I'm not going to accept this reality. I'm not going to accept this path or this trajectory or the future they're proposing.

And that's not exactly what I'm saying, because a lot of us equate acceptance with apathy. We think that if we accept something, that means we don't care or we've given up somehow. And so we resist even really understanding where we are and what's happening, because we think that that signals defeat in order to do that. And I think this is a distinction we really got to get into a little bit more, because to me, acceptance is not apathy.

Acceptance is being here, right now, in this moment, to go, what has happened? How far have the norms been pushed? How different is this situation from other situations we've been in? How much power or how little power do we have?

How much community infrastructure do we have to face ice coming to our city? These are like the questions we have to like dig into, but first we have to dig into this is happening now. And not staying in that place of, I wish something else was happening, or maybe if we just vote in the midterm, something else will be happening. And I'm not saying that to discourage people.

I vote, I'm gonna be honest with you. I voted in every single election. I voted as soon as I could vote. But voting is the least of what I do.

I hope. So it's not a discouragement, but it's to say, We have to accept our options and sometimes we have to accept our diminishing options. We have to have a sober understanding of our power and sometimes our diminishing power. Because it's only from that kind of grounded acceptance can you actually make choices about how to rectify the situation.

If you are still living in some past, while the ground underneath you is being eroded, and you're looking off in the other direction, the ground will continue to be eroded by those that can actually face the moment. So I want to really make that distinction for us that acceptance is not apathy. Acceptance is groundedness. Let's get clear on what time it is.

Let's get clear on how serious things are. Let's get clear even on how the envelope has been pushed and what that allows for. Let's get grounded on that so that we can actually show up to this moment. We can show up now.

I think that's so important because to me, you know, the killing of Renee Good changes the paradigm somewhat. And this kind of goes to the other thing that I wanted to just say this time, which is Renee Good's killing is distinct in a number of ways. It was ICE that did it. I think even the way that she showed up in her activism as what I'm imagining, and this is maybe me making up a story, but using what she thought was her privilege in order to protect other people, putting that on the line and then being murdered.

So we haven't seen a lot of that kind of action. And then we haven't seen a lot of murder of white women, white mothers. We haven't seen that. And you'll hear a lot of Black people, a lot of Black organizers, people that have been involved in this struggle for a long time say, this is what we've been telling you.

We've been telling you that the state will kill with impunity. We've been telling you that. And I was on a Reddit thread, and I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I'm a Redditor. I don't know that I'm a Redditor.

I won't claim that identity. But sometimes I'm on Reddit. And I saw someone say, in response to a black person saying, this is what we've been telling you is possible. And someone said, well, you know, it's hard for some people to understand it's real until it hits them at home, until it happens to them.

And I understand that sentiment. Of course, I understand that sentiment. I fall prey to that all the time. There's so many things that are happening in the world.

But I will say this is where some of the confusion for me happens is that when this happens to, we can just look at Minneapolis, when this happens to Jamar Clark, or when this happens to Philando Castile, that is happening to you. Why is that not happening to you? that we are different. I'm not going to say that, you know, everybody's the same and all of that.

But, you know, when they talk about Black people as canaries in the goldmine, what happens to us will eventually happen to you. It just does. But also that is true because we are you. We are human beings.

And if this can happen to human beings, Even if people try to conceptualize that we're not human beings, it still has to be a conception. It's not a fact. The fact is we are human beings. And the story that gets told on top of that is that some people are more human beings and some people are lesser human beings.

But because it's a story, it moves around. So if it happens to us, it will happen to you because it is already happening to you if it's happening to us. And I think that's a really important thing for people to understand. And we say, oh, it happened to her because she was an activist and she was in the wrong place and she shouldn't have been there.

The story will keep changing, the line will keep moving. The line of deserving keeps moving. And the sooner we accept that and know that that can happen, the sooner we are equipped to contend with that. build something in our own narratives or in how we show up that can actually undermine that as a possibility.

But first we have to accept it. First we have to accept that. So I'm preaching a little bit today but this is what's what's been on my heart is how do we accept? How do we accept as a way out of the kind of freeze I see so many people in.

I was thinking of this freeze as like, you know, the acceptance is the thawing of the freeze. When we accept, everything gets to drop down into our bodies, into our presence, into this field. When we freeze, it's sort of suspended. It's suspended above our tissues even.

So the acceptance is a thawing. And then the question is, you know, what's the action? And, um, you know, I have a lot of thoughts on this, but I also want to bring a lot of people onto the podcast that can, can speak to this question more clearly. Uh, how do we go from, from the freeze to the thong to the action and, um, kind of break ourselves out of this cycle that I think we can get in, especially around social media of, You know, we get shocked, we express our outrage on social media, and

then we get sort of drained and depleted because it doesn't. have the element of connectivity often. I'm not saying it's not possible on social media. I'm saying often we can end up feeling more hopeless.

And how do we move towards connectivity in the actions that we take so that actually replenishes us as we do them? It's a question I want to be in with other people. So that's kind of what's on my heart today. And I want to invite people again back to the Patreon where we'll be in conversation about this.

I'd love to hear other people's perspectives on this. I really, as a teacher or practitioner, my stance is always I have ideas, sometimes insight. But I want to be changeable by the conversations that I'm in with other people. So if you want to go join us in that conversation, if you have something that got sparked in you or something you've been holding, please share with the community.

Let us be in conversation around all of this. And let us know how you enjoyed this last week's episode with Sami Nasrat, who I find just to be a really warm and thoughtful and open person. If you've checked out her book, Good Things, please let us know. And also I think this thing that she really left us was what's a small good thing?

What's a small good thing in your life that's keeping you connected? What's a small good thing that you can amplify. And one person on my Instagram said, you know, just holding their child at night felt like a small good thing, but even in that there was a vastness, a width in that. And so I want to invite us to share some of these small good things in our lives because we can give them more space.

They can take up more space. They don't have to be a small, good, and maybe we make it a little unimportant thing, To me, holding your child or holding a loved one or whatever it might be, caring for someone is a small, good, actually vast thing in a life if we give it that kind of attention and that kind of reverence. So if you haven't listened to Samin's episode, please do.

And let us know what's a small, good thing. What's a small, good thing? For me, what's a small, good thing? My small, good thing is that I've been dancing outside every day.

At least one song, usually three songs, I've danced outside every day and it's changed my relationship to the day. So that's a small good thing that I'm doing and I'd love to hear yours. Let us know how you enjoyed this mini episode and please just be in conversation with us. We have an exciting guest episode next week and then I'll be back the following week with a mini episode.

Thank you all. Talk soon and take good care. Becoming the People is produced by devon de Leña with special production support this season by Jasmine Stein. It's sound engineered and edited by Michael Maine.

Our theme song was created by Mayyadda. If you're enjoying these conversations, please subscribe, rate, and especially, especially leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever it is you listen. And if you haven't already, please join us over at the Patreon, Prentis Hemphill. We are having a great time over there building community, learning together.

Come join us. And as always, thank you for listening to The Common People.