Today is Friday, Day 115 in Bahrain’s stay-at-home time, day 80 of The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad. The prompt today, on Juneteenth, is by Marcus G. Miller, “How did you learn (or how are you learning) to balance work and play?” First, you should really read the reflection he wrote about this prompt on his Instagram account. It is stunningly beautiful.

 

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Today I was featured in #theisolationjournals, creative project by my good friend @suleikajaouad, a brilliant writer and inspiring speaker. Here are my reflections on this Juneteenth Jubilee celebration. “My father once told me that success is the price of admission to the next challenge. He told this to me after having received high praise for leading a successful project at work, and at that moment, I could detect, but could not yet name, several emotional colors blazing out of his eyes. There was the simple crimson pride of a job well done, there was the effervescent azure ebullience induced by the promise of a bright future, there was earthy brown contemplation of a warrior taking a moment’s rest, and there was black love. The love was black because he, in his blackness, was able to claim a level of victory that eluded so many men of his father’s generation, and men of his own. And he could take that lesson, a life-affirming blueprint for managing success, and teach it—from the full weight of the experience—to his black son. The words were clever enough as an aphorism, but what was transmitted to me was the full spectrum of what it meant to him to say those words. It nearly brought me to tears. And so when considering Juneteenth, that shining golden day in 1865 when General Gordon Granger rode into Galveston, Texas, and proclaimed the freedom of the black women and men who were enslaved there, even though the Emancipation Proclamation had come two and a half years earlier; when considering their joy, and jubilee, and dancing, I hear the words of my father. I see the pink and purple and candied red of their celebration, and I see the long grey road ahead, through history, connecting them to the colorful eyes of my father, connecting them to me. Let us hold labor and liberation in balance. Let us refuse to work without rest and reward, but also let us not eat, drink, and be merry, believing that tomorrow we will die. Let us mark every accomplishment with its deserved color, then let us not forget to look up at the ominous white snow-capped peaks of the mountains we must yet climb.” #math #saxophone #BAM #Juneteenth #Jubilee #freedom #philosophy #music

A post shared by Marcus G. Miller (@imaginewithmarcus) on Jun 19, 2020 at 8:36am PDT

I know as a white person on Juneteenth, I look at this prompt differently than Marcus did. He said so eloquently, “Let us hold labor and liberation in balance. Let us refuse to work without rest and reward, but also let us not eat, drink, and be merry, believing that tomorrow we will die. Let us mark every accomplishment with its deserved color, then let us not forget to look up at the ominous white snow-capped peaks of the mountains we must yet climb.” I know he speaks these words from a place that I cannot understand. My balancing work and play has been a trifling exercise in privilege. I have had ample opportunities to work and play. Sadly, I have spent too little of my time working for the liberation of oppressed people in our country and around the world. I am repenting of this fact now.

However, I will write about this prompt for me as I am today. “How did you learn (or how are you learning) to balance work and play?” I’m kind of a workaholic, and I’m a teacher. So put those two together and I’ve always worked too many hours. I love the work and it is never finished, so that is my teacher life. But, even for the ten years I took off to be at home with my kids, I seemed to always find other “work” to keep me busy–not always having to do with children. Now that my daughters are grown and married, I work even more hours. My husband works six days a week, so I always do too. We try to take Fridays off and relax and do some work that needs doing too–like today we went grocery shopping and changed the bed sheets. Then I find myself at the computer on Friday too, writing this journal entry and reading a few student novels.

For me play often consists of writing, cooking, creating. I do love to play games and read too. But really most of my “play” could be summed up in staying busy, making something, finishing something, publishing something. Why? I don’t know. I am always amazed that my husband can just sit and chill. I have never been able to do that much, but I have learned from him after lots of years of marriage.

I am still learning there is value in being bored.