No. 8: Stand Out, You Beautiful Thing
You are beyond measure. No statistic can hold you.
The Old Truck on Tyranny.
This week continues a series inspired by Tim Snyder’s 2017 book On Tyranny and the “20 Lessons” derived from his study.
Stand out. Someone has to. It is easy to follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there is no freedom. Remember Rosa Parks. The moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.
You are beautiful, standing there. I have never seen anything like you.
Seeing you, so distinct, feels like it might be the most important moment of my life up until now.
Thank you for being here. My life would not be the same if I had not been introduced to you. I would still be within the simpler understanding of the world I had before I came into your presence.
The you-ness of you here is teaching me something I suspected but could not place; that statistics and counts erase us. Resorting to talk of populations obscures us. Measuring people glosses over who we are. Who you are.
As I see you here, your youness is not representative of anything. It is just standalone glory. I can't thank you enough. I don't ever want to stop beholding you.
The world in my phone may be massive, but you in all your dimensions, in analog, are an unquantifiable wonder. Now that I know you, digital marks of you will remind me who you are and light up my heart. Text me, send memes, post. When I see signs of you I will remember who you are in the flesh.
I will recall that you are all these distinctions and particulars of opinion, taste, habitual head motions, funny phrases you say when you are frustrated, unshakeable faiths you hold.
It occurs to me that you must know other people, know them distinctly and in this way I am seeing you right now. That you can tell them what they are. Tell them that whatever group boundaries have been drawn around them, they are always much more than that. That they shine.
They are strings of beads stretching past where I can make them out, ready to glimmer. Lifting one of us up brings us all into the light.
