What can change in 20 days?

I was about 20 days into the BTY 84 day challenge. Not even a quarter of the ‘way there’, I would have thought. But, having done just one of these challenges before, I know that the external milestone is nothing in comparison to the inner journey. 

I took Alyssa’s class during the day time. In recognition of the ongoing racial injustice, we were all trying to both absorb and take action. I was frozen in absorption. She asked us to meditate, for 8 minutes and 43 seconds, the amount of time the police had a knee pressed on George Floyd’s throat. Alyssa challenged us with this meditation, to use these 8 minutes and 43 seconds to hold Hope.

The realization of 8:43 seconds was excruciating. It was hard to sit with. Tears strolled down my face. Anxiety hit me. My heart beats were faster. I wanted to get up. I felt the pain of that want. To have the choice to get up, and walk away from the discomfort..is privilege. I am a very brown skinned girl and I’ve been embarrassed by my own immense privilege. Hope didn’t hit me this day.

It hit me a week later. My employer launched a new mentorship program working with youth. I wanted to apply it but I had so many things to do that day. Emails flying, slack messages pinging me at work, kids tapping me on the shoulder at home, text messages popping in on my phone. 

I remembered: 8:43 seconds of hope. I took a few deep breaths. Put everything else aside and started the application. It took less than 10 minutes. As I started writing, I realized that this hope, this thought, this action was more important than anything anyone else needed from me at the moment. The world faded away and I focused, submitted, and changed. Not because of the outcome of the application. But that ability to reprioritize this action over everything else. 

It’s usually not on the mat where you see the shift. I knew that shift was not a temporary shift. It was day 1 of looking at my service to my company’s diversity & inclusion efforts much broader, with higher importance and value. Those shifts are permanent. When you feel them, you are changed.