What I’m Learning About Motivation While Black

Some mornings, my first thought is, “Why keep going?” Within hours of being awake, I’ll see a bunch of signals that this society hates me and that the world is falling apart. I’ll watch countless innocent people suffer, while the people causing their suffering deny or justify it, and the people who benefit from it cheer. I’ll think, “Why doesn’t somebody stop this? Why don’t we stop this?” And then, I’ll remember: “This is how this society was built to work. It runs on blood.”

“I don’t want to live in a world like this,” I think to myself. Often.

Sometimes, people make me feel like I’m the only one who wants to jump off this slave ship we call society.

“La vida es chévere, Ricardo,” they tell me.

“It’s a selfish thing to do,” says my dad.

“It’s the coward’s way out,” a stranger yells at me.

They act like I’m being unreasonable.

But how is it unreasonable to want to leave a world that was built on, and thrives on, your people’s suffering? But the world can change, they say. I tried changing the world — all I got was new trauma from other activists, and this lousy T-shirt.

Is it unreasonable to think that if this world is built to be cruel and unfair — and the revolutionaries are too busy…