Welcome to Lucky Bug Archive
When I was younger, I never would've imagined I'd be as deeply enthralled by politics as I am, and have been, in my twenties. One moment I’m 5 years old, eating out of a giant watermelon on the back porch on a hot Mississippi summer. In the next, I'm walking alongside a busy city highway as part of a Free Palestine march. How exactly did I end up here?
Growing up in a majority conservative, Bible-belt part of the United States, it would’ve been easy to conform to the status quo and accept what I was exposed to from the beginning. However, I’ve always been naturally curious and admittedly, I worried about being on the right side of things. I wanted to be right, and I fought the urge to insist I was right from pride alone. I had already been introduced to new perspectives and ideas by being active on social media and having easy access to so much information. When I encountered something that didn’t make sense, naturally I would seek the answers. Fortunately, in the age of computers, all the information I needed was at the tip of my fingers. Why is the sky blue? What does my dream mean? What came first, the chicken or the egg? The first topic I became invested in was the issue of gender inequality, which makes sense since it affects me directly and it was a widely discussed topic in the context of the 2016 Election. The more I saw through the news, and searching for the answers online, the harder the issue at hand would be to understand. I would go into the search with one question and come out with even more.
Meanwhile, as I was observing the world and its complexity, so was my Dad. He was receiving information at about the same rate as I was, but in a different lens. What we were seeing and ultimately the opinions we were forming had to be put to use somehow. I was newly in my twenties and still living at home, while he had spent more time in the world and gained insight in many ways. That did nothing to stop the dinner table debates we would often participate in. I found I didn’t just want to win the argument, I wanted what I said to make sense and I worried about being wrong. We often disagreed, but the more I sought to be right, the better I got at formulating my ideas and backing them up. From the introduction to feminist theory all the way to class theory, I learned that things were very intertwined and began to view issues systemically and with nuance.
Why am I telling you all this?
In my search, I realized that some of the answers I looked for really didn’t exist. I went into these topics with genuine curiosity and empathy, learned more about the systems involved and the historical context, and found that the “answer” was the space in-between. It was the gray in between the black and white perspective people try to push on every issue. While this could understandably frustrate someone, I think it helped me understand the world a lot more. It’s normal to be uncomfortable because the unknown is scary. However, I think it’s really important for us to push against that fear and learn to sit in the uncertainty and stay curious about why things are the way they are. If this resonates with you, I truly understand how you feel and it’s nice to not be alone.
What answers are you looking for?
