Book 149 - A Year of Magical Learning

Reflection Title: Our past and pain may be different, but our path forward is united

Book – Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Book Description: What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?

Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.

Reflection:

Again, this journey keeps taking me to new places and opening new doors that I never thought I’d open. This journey with Ta-Nehisi Coates is definitely a door I don’t think I would have ever opened before this journey began. I only stumbled upon this door because I asked my wife to give me a book recommendation of something that seems like the exact opposite of what would normally interest me, she recommended Between the World and Me.

One of my core values is to challenge myself in all areas and dimensions of my life. Breaking out of my preconceived mental constructs that I’ve spent a lifetime accruing is not easy, but that is the point. This journey is about exploring your core values and letting them lead the way. I’m glad my core values led me to this book and I heard this man’s words. Not only is Ta-Nehisi’s writing brilliant, but his message is also always incredibly challenging to anyone that is willing to listen.

Listening to Coates talk to his son about what his lived experience as a Black Man in this country was hard to hear, but I appreciate his bravery in sharing. I could feel the pain in his voice and the life that he has lived. I could hear how terrified he is for his family, loved ones, and his only child as he described all the land mines out there in this world that only his people have to navigate. As someone who is white and didn’t grow up economically challenged, it felt like he was describing a different world. We may geographically live close in proximity, but our lives couldn’t be any further from each other in a lot of ways simply because the color of our skin.

While Coates and I may not have a million things in common, we do share one very important thing in common…pain. Pain is something I know very well these days after losing my first-born child. Pain is the universal binder of this world. No matter who you are, where you live, the color of your skin, how much money you have…eventually pain will find you and you’ll have to figure out what you will do with it.

Ironically, while I can’t relate very much to Coates specific pain, I can very much relate to his path forward. Coates is a questioner and lives his life guided by his endless curiosity. He processes his pain by turning it into questions, exploring those questions with his thoughts, and then processes his thoughts by getting them down on paper and out into the world to share with others.

On this path forward of processing our pain, we are 1,000% UNITED!

If you haven’t noticed yet by following along with this journey, this all began with immense pain. The day my daughter died, is the day that the Year of Magical Learning began. When we lost her, my quest for answers began. I’ve been processing all of this by slowly asking more and more questions, seeking answers, and sharing my thoughts with her through my writing to stay connected. To me, this feels exactly like what Coates has been doing as well and I feel a kindred spirit with him after reading his story.

Our past and pain may be different, but our path forward is united. That shared bond of pain, questioning, seeking answers, and sharing our thoughts in writing to our children is way more powerful than any social constructs that this world can throw at us.

I hope someday he will read the story of my own pain I wrote, called I Can’t Imagine, and we can sit down together to share a dialogue about life, our questions, and our hopes for our children. I’m very much so looking forward to that if it ever comes to be.

Question: What ways do you unexpectedly find commonalities with a person on the surface it may look like you don’t?

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Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? An Introduction

YOML Podcast Discussion - Coming Soon

YOML Bookstore - Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates