Float Like A Butterfly Sting Like A Bee

     I am one of the most widespread, frequently quoted people on our planet (and thank YOU🙏); my words having become life mantras to so many people (thank YOU, again🙏). But who wrote my life mantra? Has anyone ever stopped to ask that? Was there anyone else who wrote something that's become my go-to line in my own life? Nobody's asked me that before.

     My own mantra is simple and short: "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee." These are the words of Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Clay (MA is what became his new name when he later in life converted to Islam). Say that again, "Float like a 🦋 sting like a 🐝".

     Cassius Clay was born into the whole system of black segregation and slavery, thus he denounced his "slave's name" and took on the title he's now world renown for.

     To me, these words are a super simple fallback during any situation in life I may find myself in. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee: reminds me to go through life lightly but to make impacts that are felt. You don't have to tread down hard in order to be impactful in this world. You just need to be impactful. That really is all. You don't have to walk on this planet treading hard in order to be felt. You just need to make yourself felt, and that really is all. Power and gentleness. Sharpness and softness. Sting but float.🦋🐝 And now you know!!

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Let The Dominos Fall

     So, like I mentioned in an earlier post, the ostracism I've felt in my life has come from Asians (I am Eurasian). It's either "You are too white to be one of us", "You are too white to have any proper morals", or, "You don't look white at all what kind of a white person are you?", "That other Eurasian girl looks whiter than you, you just look Asian, what's wrong with you?", "Why isn't your nose like white people on t.v.?"

     And it goes back to before I was even born. Before I was even born and my mother was still pregnant with me, she used to pray every day that God would give me "dark hair and dark eyes" so I wouldn't look "too white". She has told me the story so many times.

     Asian racism is raw, brutal, and they just say it to your face like there's nothing wrong with it. Although I do excuse my mother, since she probably just didn't want to feel too different-looking from her daughter, the story she's told me hurts every time, bless her heart, she has no idea.         Asian racism is harsh and I've never not gone without it. Like, quarantine has relieved me of having to deal with it every fucking day. But then I still deal with it in quarantine neighbourhood group chats. I recently just gave someone a very long lecture in our neighbourhood group chat. A really LONG lecture. So as you can see, even in quarantine, based on a Viber profile photo, I still deal with the backwardness of what is Asian racism.

     The problem with Asian racism is that people get away with it because the focus of the problem of racism is constantly geared towards white people. I just wanted to discuss this a bit because I mentioned it in my earlier post. I sincerely hope that what's happening now takes a domino effect upon other forms of racism, as well. There are serious racist issues happening every day in China, for example, where they treat Tibetans like property. Nobody's trying to seriously liberate Tibet, for example.

     But anyway, this is not to detract from the current focus, AT ALL. 🧐 This is only to bring to light something I brought up earlier.

     I sincerely anticipate, and hope for, the dominos to keep on falling over. 🙏

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Nobody Needs Your Heart Cut Out

     You don't need to cut out the heart in your chest so other people can breathe. You just need to let them use their lungs. The right of someone to breathe does not detract from your heartbeat. We must not fear the lives that others live. Someone else going to Heaven doesn't mean you're going to Hell. Someone else going to Hell does not mean you're going to burn too. We must not fear the freedom that others have. You don't need to stop breathing so other people can keep their lungs. You just need to let them breathe. Why don't we all put a final end to the limitations that we think we are born into? They're not real. They don't exist.

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Bring Home The Giraffes

     The reason why it is so very crucial that people deeply understand, that standing at the side of Justice does not require shame and guilt on their part, is because of this: that mindset creates an ideology stating that, in order for people to receive justice, others must lose something. And that only reinstigates white supremacy. How? Because the concept of white supremacy is built on the ideology that if others have what is equal to theirs, they must be losing something. White supremacy is based on an ideology of fear and of limitation. Did you see that before reading this? Maybe. Or, maybe you are just seeing this now.

     To go into a new future, saying, "Here, you can now have decent equal treatment because I now am filled with shame and guilt", is still the ideology of white supremacy in action! White people do not lose anything when black people have something! This mentality needs to come to an end, in all of its varying shapes and forms!

     Furthermore, the ideology of terrorism is built upon, "You now pay for the sins of your forefathers", as what we see carried out by international terrorist organisations. We also need to never sink into that. The ideologies of the past must not be allowed to mutate or evolve into forms that may be carried around as little lap pets into our FUTURE. . The ideologies that we form now need to morph into giraffes that carry us tall and proud high above and over the train wrecks that were once our place of residency. 🦒🦒🦒🦒🦒🦒🦒      Be very, very, very careful. Very careful. We are entering into new territories of our Future and what we build upon now will determine the lives our grandchildren will have. Please be careful, everyone. 🙏 

🎨@manka_kasha

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Nobody Needs You To Hate Yourself

     To be very clear, nothing I have said or enacted upon over recent days has come from a place of resentment. Let no human being say, "She's just saying that because she's a self-loathing white person who doesn't like her whiteness", or, "Her white daddy hurt her", or, "She's not accepted by white people." 🙄🤚 Just no. ✋ Making this crystal clear here: first of all, I am Eurasian. ☝️ A Eurasian leaning more towards my "Eur" side, because that's what I look more like. Never have I once felt ostracized by white people. Never. I have felt ostracized by Asian people every day! But never have I once felt that way from a white person. I am perfectly fine looking more "Eur" than Asian and I don't resent that at all. In fact, I bleached my hair blonde! 🤷🏼‍♀️ That says a lot! Secondly, my father adores me and I have no resentment towards him at all. Furthermore, I have never had problems staying in France, Belgium, England, Italy, Norway. Even French people don't ostracize me (in a world where everyone feels ostracized by the French, this is news!!) 

     My stance during these past few days has not come from a place of shame, guilt, resentment, or hate. Zero. Everything I've said has come from kinship to Justice, Progress, Future. It is exceedingly crucial, as we take our first steps onto this brand new, razor sharp, thin path that we have now forged, that we do not build our new future upon the brick and mortar of shame, guilt, resentment, hate. Shame, guilt, hate are often tools that Justice finds useful to enact a purpose. But then the tools must be put away. Perhaps guilt and shame made you finally stand up for black people. But now that you're here, it's time to realise that nobody carries the sins of their forefathers, nor does the colour of white skin mean that a person is an oppressor. Resentment shouldn't pave this new path. White shame and white guilt shouldn't either. Nobody is responsible for another person's sins. To stand at the side of Justice does NOT require guilt, shame, hate. Stand for Justice because YOU ARE JUST. That's it. Black people aren't asking white people to hate themselves! BLACK PEOPLE JUST WANT A FUTURE. 

 🎨 @manka_kasha

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Human

Human before race, human before religion, human before politics.

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This Is The Year

     What's happening right now is a distinctive pivotal point in the history of humankind. And why is it happening now? It is happening now because in order for it to have taken place, we, as a collective race, needed to be shaken and sat down. Shaken by death, by horror and sat down by isolation. Which is exactly what has been happening since the beginning of this year. Distractions are gone. Everyone is forced to sit down and to feel things. When George Floyd was killed we all felt that, because all the clubs are closed and we have no parties to attend. We felt it hard. And then we thought "why is this still happening?" Then we started to do something. We started to do something in a way like we haven't done it in a hundred years! We started to get loud, and then louder and then louder! Then we joined hands and we all became frontliners in a war that requires us to all become a new kind of human!

     It takes white people to break away and say, "I can't breathe". And I deeply hope that this is a domino effect right now, because, it takes Chinese people to break away and say, "I don't eat cats and dogs", "Set Tibet free", "Down with communism." And it takes Christians to break away and say, "Gay people should have the same civil rights as anyone else in this country", "Trump is not right", "We are not the only ones that are going to Heaven." And it takes Muslims to break away and say, "Down with the Taliban", "Down with Abu Sayyaf", "End the ISIL." It takes a breaking away from a conformity and a sense of self identity and belonging, on behalf of what is beyond ourselves!

     I hope that George Floyd becomes not only the martyr of the Black Lives Matter movement and not only the martyr for black people everywhere, but I hope George Floyd died for the entire race of humankind, because I want this to be the year when everything got different. When everything wasn't the same again. When we became The New Human.

🎨 Ani Castillo

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The New Human

     We live in a time when everyone must bear arms on behalf of something on the outside of them that moves on the inside of their hearts. We no longer live in an era where peace was equivalent to detachment. Peace thanks to detachment is just an unwillingness to commit to being alive. That era is over. Peace by means of invalidation is over. Peace through the validation of what is essential to others, is the only way through this now. I validate you, you validate me, we validate each other, we are attached to each other. Peace through the acknowledgement of what is human. This is the way forward.

     "Invalidation" is an act of tyranny that is carried out daily at the personal level, between friends, family, lovers, co-workers, etc. It is the easiest and most prevalent form of "little tyrannies" that are enacted upon, and are carried out every day. Invalidating another's experience, feeling, thought, action, by making it seem irrelevant or small, is cowardice, and at the root of it is a fear of living life beyond your own borders.

     We talk about national borders all the time, when in reality, it's the borders that we place between ourselves and the people close to us, that take profound effect in human lives, on the daily. There is even a spiritual movement in the New Age group that focuses so much on putting up borders, that these borders are simply passive aggressive behaviours designed to pamper a person in their own preconceived or misconceived bubbles.

     The borders are old and that era is over. Peace in this new era is not about sitting on top of a rock in alienation to gain a selfish version of peace. Peace, in our new era now, is about the realisation that peace for all is peace for one! We now bear arms for battles happening beyond our own little worlds because this is what it means to be the new human.

🎨 @manka_kasha

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It's Too Late For That

     We live in a time that's too late. It's too late. It's too late to say that what doesn't involve you personally, doesn't bother you in your heart. It's too late for that. You are either bothered, or you are a waste of oxygen on this planet. Be bothered. Be bothered by lots of things. Be bothered by many things. Let your heart shake from the things of this world that are too much or that are too little. We are not here to live a life unshaken.

     Silence in the face of injustice, is injustice in action.

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So, You Think You're Ready For Death But Are You Ready For The Things Worse Than Death?

     Nick Cordero is a Canadian Broadway Theatre performer and Tony Award Nominee actor. Only 41 years old, healthy, with his own little family.

     Just last month, Nick contracted Covid-19 and has since experienced two strokes, a blood clot in his leg which has led to its being amputated, he is in coma and has been in and out of intense medical intervention for his lungs, which, according to his spouse, "are now as damaged as the lungs of someone who's been smoking for fifty years." From April to May of the same year, Covid-19 has managed to inflict fifty years' worth of damage upon a healthy thespian's lungs. 

     I think that there is this prevailing attitude right now, one that has people feeling like, "I'm ready to die, if it's my time then it's my time!" And unfortunately this is a root cause of a current major preeminent societal problem. It is unrealistic and egotistical. The reality is that there are things that can happen to you which are far worse than death. Think about losing your leg. Think about having to be attached to a ventilator for the rest of your life. Think about becoming paralyzed due to stroke and being bound to a wheelchair. So, you think you're ready for death; but are you ready for the things this disease can cause which are worse than death?

     Nick's story is so painful to hear about, it hurts to even look at his young, healthy photos. But everyone should know his story, because he was a healthy, young family man who now has lost a leg and has a set of lungs ravaged as if he's been smoking longer than his actual current lifespan. There are things worse than death. So, before you take up and wear an egotistical attitude towards this panhelldemic we are all going through, ask yourself if you're ready to stay alive but live severely impaired, crippled, or even with severe loss of cognitive function. Because if the answer is no, then you need to do a daily reality check from hereon after. 

Nick with wife Amanda Kloots and son.

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