Reading Bayo Akomolafe’s year-end essay, “Why I Sang in the Dungeons: A Prophecy to End the Year 2023”, has finally inspired me to write.
I want to be in public dialogue with his work and elevate his work. I want this with so many people. I want this because I find my self through conversations with other people and in dialogue with myself. I discover who I am in greater depths through talking to others, reading others’ works - through relationships - and through how these conversations and interactions inform the conversations and reflections I have more quietly with myself.
This isn’t a novel idea - attachment scientists and practitioners, probably psychologists and therapists also, have written about and spoken about this - we find who we are through relationships. Winnicott famously wrote, “There is no such thing as an infant.” An infant only exists with and alongside the existence of a birth mother. I first came across this quote through my Masters in Social Welfare program, in a course about infants and child development. Since then, I have used this quote to evidence a belief, and I think a fact, that there is no such thing as a self; there is only self and an other, or self and society. [Side note: watch this space in the future for my thoughts on belief vs fact, truth, and epistemology]
I write this as a dare to myself, a dare to be in conversation with, a dare to believe that my being and my thoughts are worthy of being in conversation.
This is also a dare to see myself as a writer. To live out a hope and a belief that I am a thought-leader. Thought-leaders must put their thoughts out there, right? I have put my thoughts ‘out there’ through my official professional work and career, through public lectures and keynotes, through poetry events, and various forms of writing. But I have yet to feel satisfied with how (the medium) and how often I am sharing my thoughts. I’ve blogged inconsistently. I have co-authored academic articles that are now published, a couple book chapters, and a working paper of mine on the epistemology of survival seems to be making the rounds. But I am still dissatisfied because I have so much more to share in written form.
This blog/essay you are now reading is my public declaration to make a stronger commitment to be in conversation with others through writing.
This is me, daring greatly (thanks, Brene Brown), to live into the identity of a writer. And although there are a lot of meaty sentences in this blog that I could flush out at greater length, I want to start off by sharing the work of several writers. I’ve read their work over various time periods but specifically in the last week, and these have inspired me to dare greatly.