People are watching

Your friends are watching, your coworkers are watching, your spouse’s coworkers are watching, your kids are watching and listening to what you say and do now. People are listening. I’m listening. 

Your opinions and hot takes, your let me play devil’s advocate here, your not alls, your keep the politics out of tech, your stay in your lane. People see them. To some is profoundly hurtful, to others is just part of their day to day hurt, nothing new to see here. To the fortunate is nothing, see you in Tahoe next weekend. People are seeing your empathy, that one that is praised by your friends but can not extend to people that are not close to your socioeconomic upbringing, we see you empathize when a child is hurt, we saw you empathize for other countries struggles, we know you are not monsters. We know that it’s not that you do not have critical thinking skills, that you can not discern information. We know that you self taught so many things, launching companies, bootstrapping businesses, other languages, other skills, trades. We see you when you ask how we are doing before, we felt sometimes your hand on our shoulders. 

And we see you now. How you seem completely, utterly incapable of empathizing with the feeling people have during this week that feels like a decade. How you seem to not know how to pick a book, how you seem helpless asking for someone to enlighten you, for others to help you understand how they are feeling. That’s the dissonance that’s so striking to me. That these people that I know are empathetic, that can think and analyze information, that otherwise care about so many issues the world is also facing are having such a hard time over this. That dissonance is what hurts us. When you have to question yourself “maybe it’s me” is what hurts. The gas lightning: so many of social media and blog posts just a mere *check notes* two weeks ago were about how the system is right you have to learn to navigate it and step up. It’s you, we treat everyone the same. And you know what, I excused those comments too, this is how it is so you better power trough. Now all these companies want to know where are the founders *of color*, the speakers, now they want to amplify the voices, what they can do, how they can be helpful. It’s the time of the rage, selective rage.

Now you are kind of waking up. I say kind of because you know it is not completely. Woke enough to post the hashtag, not enough to reach your friends. Or not enough to seat with the discomfort that must be realizing that you, yes you, a kind, nice, hard worker parent, coworker, boss, friend, neighbor might have fall to some, or god forbid, all the behaviors that characterizes *those* people. The bigots, the insensitive, the monsters. But you are not one of *those* people. You have friends *of color*.

“The stronger need of human beings is to remain consistent with how they define themselves”. Or something along those lines, can’t remember the origin among the rage and the tears now.

Maybe it is time to redefine yourself. 

People are watching. I know I definitely am.