Martin Luther King — Messenger of Love
In observance of Martin Luther King Day
As a nonbinary person, I know about not belonging and irritating some with my existence. But that’s no longer the problem it used to be since I discovered the power of love.
Now I shrug and think, I’ve never belonged, and I’ve always irritated some because I’m different.
Yet, there is a world of old pain hidden in these words because belonging is a primal necessity. Our long-ago ancestors couldn’t survive alone. They needed their group for shelter, sustenance, protection, companionship, and love. That’s how we’ve evolved.
In modern life, many of us forego the benefits of belonging, not by choice but because our structures allow us to survive alone, and so we do. Loneliness and separateness is a well-studied phenomenon of the current state of white Western society.
I’ve been given to understand from the books I’ve read by black authors, that black families hang together more tightly, are less lonely.
But there must be another kind of loneliness, that of not belonging to the greater family of one’s country. Of not being sheltered, of sustenance withheld, protection inverted to become threat, companionship denied, and love…well, love.
