Give Up What's Mine: Standing Up For Others
When I write about rights, what I’m assuming is that we all agree on what our “rights” and that we all have the same ones. I wish I could say that is true, but we’d all be fooling ourselves if we didn’t look back at a history book and realized that for a long time, society has accorded different rights to different people depending on their age, race, gender, sexuality, class and disability. One of the most important parts of forbearance is that we stand up for the rights of others. All of those rights. If I have something in my life that I consider natural, normal, of course I am able to do that, then I cannot give away someone else’s right to that thing.
In fact, if I see someone being asked to give up that right, I must instead forbear my own rights to stand up for theirs. Within my own family, we face this all the time. Before all this pandemic stuff, I was scheduled to go into Willow’s classroom to talk to her fellow students about diabetes. It turns out when you disappear from class a couple times a day and there’s always a parent at every field trip and every class party, kids start to ask questions. Willow has a right to live her life without her health being questioned every day. It would be easy for me to ignore this right. After all, hey, she’s got to play the hand she’s dealt, right? And some kids have it much worse.
But I would think it was unacceptable to be asked a half dozen questions every day about one aspect of my body. So I need to step up and be uncomfortable so that she can have the right to some peace. With Willow’s permission, I planned to go in to explain what was going on and answer any questions for the whole class so they could get it all out of their system. Now, I may not have made this clear but I really hate dealing with large groups of students. I want to be patient and composed but I just get nervous and grumpy.
Tough shit for me, I guess. Because even if I weren’t her mom, I’d be giving up my comfort to give her the right to be at peace. This is such a small, seemingly stupid example but how much more it must be true for other, larger discriminations. Our job as connection builders is to use those connections to help each other. With permission of course, but we must help each other understand, help each other have access to the things we all take for granted.
If we’re not using our community to take care of each other, what are we even doing this for?
