I went to a bar on the weekend where the line outside the venue was longer than usual and the tables were set a little further apart. People congregated around them like they once did. They spoke and drank and laughed and everything appeared to be fine but nothing was. Something had shifted. Before the events of 2020 occurred, before we were locked down and opened back up again, we did not see what we now cannot unsee. We did not see the cracks. As coronavirus brought our lives to a halt and forced us to sit with that quiet voice inside our heads that we could no longer drown out with distractions, it’s as if we’ve all been handed a magnifying glass to examine and observe our problems. Evaluating who we are and how we are living and what we want and what we do not want and what is missing. The cracks have been exposed, whether they reveal the absence of a partner or the presence of the wrong partner or wrong career or wrong friendships or maybe it’s simply the way you were living.
For many, the magnifying glass has revealed their desire to live differently, be it quieter or slower or maybe with more meaning. For me at least, the frivolity seems more meaningless. But seeing something, and changing it are two different things. The latter is much harder. And as the restrictions ease and the diary fills up again, we have been placed back on the same train tracks only to realise we cannot blindly move forward. We cannot go back to ‘normal’ again, even if it appears otherwise. We cannot unsee what we have seen. In order to cope, we probably need to change, or at least adjust our lives, our decisions, our trajectories, to the realities we now desire over the realities we once had. The alternative is remaining in the same bar deluded with hope that everything is fine, knowing nothing is. Making that type of change requires courage, and this courage brings me to Dave Chappelle.
Dave Chappelle is an American stand-up comedian who rose to fame with ‘Chappelle’s Show’ in the early 2000s and rose to notoriety when he rejected Comedy Central’s $50 million dollar offer to complete another two seasons. Instead, he disappeared to South Africa and went on to lead a relatively reclusive life based in Ohio. He is now back in the spotlight, has recouped that $50 million with a prosperous Netflix deal, and, in 2019, his work was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humour. In his acceptance speech, Dave Chappelle thanked his mother. She was a mother who would finish a hard day's work only to go to the club and watch her teenage boy perform late into the night. She was also a mother who informed her boy of the reality in which he lived. “[My mother] filled me with every story of black life,” said Chappelle, who was raised in Washington, D.C. during the crack epidemic. “She would let me understand the context that I was being raised in. I’m being raised in a hostile environment that I have to tame. By the time I was 14 years old, I was in nightclubs mastering an adult world. It was terrifying.”
It may surprise some, but Dave Chappelle was a self-proclaimed “soft kid”. He was sensitive, frightened of fighting, and would cry easily and often. So for this boy to then stand on stage and have his voice heard in nightclubs during this time in history at his age, was nothing but courageous. And the sentence that often soothed him in the face of fear was one his mother repeated: “Son, sometimes you have to be a lion, so you can be the lamb you really are.” Now firmly established as a giant of his genre, Chappelle said, “I talk this sh** like a lion. I’m not afraid of any of you when it comes word-to-word. I will gab with the best of them, just so I can chill and be me.”
I think that could apply to just about anything, but particularly to this moment. As we jump back on the same train tracks, now knowing where the cracks are and seeing them clearly, the only way we can carve out new paths that align with the person this moment has revealed we want to be, is by being the lion sometimes. Whether it is by saying ‘no’ to things you no longer want to do or that distract you from doing the work you need to do. Whether it is being brave enough to explore a new way of living. Or maybe it’s just taking off the mask, and being brave enough to confront hard feelings and face the cracks. At its very core, I think being the lion means having the courage to listen to that quiet voice inside your head and do right by it more often. Our lives are defined by the hard choices we make but we often neglect how monumental the small ones are. Those moments, those tiny choices, are also lion moments. The more we do right by ourselves in those moments and back ourselves in the face of fear, the more we carve out a life that allows us to be the lamb we want to be, the lamb we really are. It feels like a small price to pay in order to chill and be you, doesn’t it? Time to work on that roar.
Some related (and unrelated) recommendations:
This New Yorker essay is the most flawless piece of writing I’ve read in a while. A must-read. The cover this week is also a must-see, and a history lesson.
Dave Chappelle has released a new, ‘unrefined’ set titled 8:46 in which he talks about the recent protests and the murder of George Floyd. Police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds.
Loved this New York Times article on the future of fashion. Anything Vanessa Friedman writes is gold.
Some good news! Finally! Listen to The Daily’s podcast episode on the landmark ruling for LGBT workers in the U.S.
I have held off recommending it for a few weeks, but I recently devoured Joan Didion’s classic, Play It As It Lays. Now one of my all-time favourites.
Teela Reid’s excellent op-ed in the Griffith Review on 2020 being the year of reckoning, not reconciliation.
Rebecca Traister’s brilliant op-ed on The Cut about the public performance of white supremacy.
This children's book, The Lion Inside, comes highly recommended. For the little ones in your life, or for you.
The song ‘UMI says’ by Mos Def. After Chappelle’s acceptance speech for the Mark Twain Prize for American Humour, he had Mos Def and Thundercat perform this song live.
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