niceolelevy

They got me for a moment.

Heart aching, tears flowing, they got me wondering what it was all for. Medgar, Malcolm, Martin… what did they die for? Why did John Lewis take a beating on the bridge? All the lives lost because we had the audacity to want to vote like every other American. What was the point of the pain and loss if hate was just going to circle around the back and win again?

They got me for a moment. Then I caught hold of something, a thread, thin and hard to grab. An answer? A way to make myself feel less lost? Maybe both… an answer and a comfort.

“Me.”

The little Black girl from the middle of nowhere who still smiles and says “I really did that” every time her name goes by on a TV screen.

I was the point. So were you. We were the point.

The young Black boy who dreamed of being a surgeon and now saves people in his O.R. The beautiful, brilliant woman who imagined herself in space and then made it to the stars. The man who captured the world stage and said “Yes, we can.” (And we did, for a while.)

The loss and pain and sacrifice made it possible for us to live dreams our grandparents never even imagined. We aren’t just our ancestors’ greatest hopes realized; we are dreams they didn’t even know to dream.

And now? Now the impossible’s been made possible… paths walked by men and women who look like us, whose skin we recognize as our own. We know what exists up to and beyond the limits of what “they” want us to be. Even now, hearts heavy, spirits darkened, we know what could be if we are fearless enough to reach, knowing we might fail.

So, yeah, they got me for a moment. Then I remembered. My dreams are bigger than them.

Maybe it’s too simple, too small a thing compared to the cost that came before, the price paid by those who dreamed of saving the world, especially when we see that maybe the world doesn’t want to be saved.

But my dreams are bigger than them.

So for the babies I didn’t give birth to but love more than my life… I have to remember those words. Burn them into my soul. I will cry tears over them, no doubt, and scream with rage, and maybe wish them away. But they’ll be there.

My dreams are bigger than them. I bet yours are, too. And if we live them… if our lives make those that come after us dream lives bigger than our own, maybe then it will all be worth it.