Dum Spiro Spero
Dum Spiro Spero: 15 June 2020
On Christmas Eve 2005 I watched my mother suffocating.
While recovering from a surgical procedure for ovarian cancer, she’d contracted pneumonia in the hospital. She fought to be discharged in time for Christmas and this was granted on the 23rd. Mama made a point of slowly dragging her oxygen tank through the house, looking deliberately around each room as though memorizing it. That evening the whole family shared a marvelous meal brought by dear church friends who were thoughtful enough to include a nice bottle of wine.
In the morning Mama struggled to breathe, even with the oxygen tank. She was weak and couldn’t eat much. Fretting in her room, I traced a couple of shallow cuts on my wrist I didn’t remember getting the night before. Mama wanted the window blinds adjusted just so, and I now regret being annoyed about that. Honestly, I would want them level, too. She fainted on the front steps when we rushed her back to the Emergency Room, and I cranked the oxygen tank up as far as it would go. Still, her blood oxygen level was 63% when the staff admitted her. She died in the hospital 12 days later, after they removed the ventilator that had been breathing for her.
Not being able to breathe has always been a particular anxiety of mine. I struggled with breathing every summer when we went to Montreat—all musty and mountainy after being shut up for the winter. My son fought battles with croup as a child and my daughter still bravely submits to allergy shots. My husband always travels with an inhaler. I still check if I think someone’s bath is taking too long.
Saturday we were swimming in a lake and I worked with Emma on treading water. I made Jack show me how well he can float. Then I took a slow pace across the lake and back, enjoying the warm and then cool water, enjoying matching my strokes with my breath. Meditative breath.
Having practiced meditation for years, and also being a generally even-keeled person, intentional breathing is calming for me. It’s my go-to when soothing someone. So Mama’s struggling, and later Jack’s croup, were particularly harrowing. When someone can’t breathe, it’s generally not helpful to suggest that they calm down by taking a deep breath.
When Derek Chauvin was kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, Mr. Floyd repeatedly rasped, “I can’t breathe.” Of the many horrendous moments of those 8 minutes and 46 seconds, that repeated plea, “I can’t breathe” torments me. Only one other phrase is worse, and that is when Mr. Floyd, close to death now, uses those last shallow breaths to call, “Mama.”
South Carolina’s state motto is Dum Spiro Spero: While I breathe, I hope. I’ve always been inspired by the motto. One could read it akin to Winston Churchill’s “never give in.” He said that in a speech to the boys at his alma mater, Harrow School, in October 1941. The complete thought is, “Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
Racism and inequality are overwhelming enemies. What can one individual do? Lots! Join a peaceful protest, ideally one organized and led by People of Color. Support minority owned businesses and tell them that you are doing so on purpose. Write to your elected officials and express support for hate crime legislation, anti-discrimination measures, and efforts to diversify budgets to put more money into community health and wellness.
All that. But here is one more. I am asking that you pledge to be respectful, especially on social media.
Now I will admit that I savor a wicked funny political meme or pithy saying as much as the next girl. A succinct expression of my outrage or fear is a sweet dopamine hit that packs the same wallop as a bite of dark chocolate—all smooth and satisfying. But as with any sugar high, it just leaves me wanting more. And that’s on purpose. The same way the brain craves the next hit of dopamine, social media algorithms exploit “the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness.” So if you post some knife-blade piece of wit and I click the link or ‘like’ or ‘share’ it on Facebook, Facebook serves me up a sharper knife. Over and over.
I’m not asking for censorship, but in the same way that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s calls for non-violent protest were grounded in love, I’m asking that you ground your speech in love. I think you do a good job of this in person; but if I didn’t know you, would I suspect so given your online presence?
When the world seems overwhelming, it’s normal to smile with guilty pleasure at a too-simplistic explanation of all that’s wrong in that world. It’s another thing to pass it along.
Before I post anything, I consider the helpful maxim: Is it true? Is it kind? Is it helpful? In this moment we desperately need to say and to hear hard truths from one another. But don’t diminish your voice by tweeting pot-shots at politicians you don’t like or the stupid things they say. Don’t go tit-for-tat with Trump-Obama-Bush-Clinton in an endless stream of ‘yeah but your team was even worse.’ Don’t waste your precious breath. Use it to amplify the good, to illuminate your truth, to test until you believe that love is stronger than hate.
I’ve been trying to figure out a way to comment on divisive posts by people I know and love, to find a sentence or two that doesn’t engage the comment, but rather the decision to post it. A nicer way of saying: Other than venting your anger, how does this post help create the change you desire? If I were someone you loved (and often I am), how would you explain your point of view to me? Blame and disdain do not convince.
Obviously, I’m still working on it. And even if I got the right words, I’m not sure I’d always be brave enough to post them. But I do think if more of us were willing to call out what’s not helpful, and make a point of considering our own offerings, then maybe our collective choices toward respect could tame the algorithms. We’d all help each other have a healthier media diet and gain some control over what’s being served.
A couple of days ago my cousin texted me the happy news that his oldest son will be attending USC (that’s South Carolina, not Southern California). He reminded me that, a few years ago when visiting these cousins, I commented on the Confederate Battle flag hanging in his son’s room.
I spent four years in the 1990s working with the religions communities in South Carolina to remove that flag from the top of our State House. We finally succeeded in 2000. It went from the top of the dome—where from the ground it looked about as big as a postage stamp—to a flagpole in the front of the main steps, adjacent to the Monument to the Confederate Dead. A sort of middle finger compromise that brokered an uneasy peace until 2015. That’s when Dylann Roof, the self-described white supremacist, murdered nine African Americans worshipping at Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston. The flag now rests respectfully in a museum, where it should have been retired in 1865, when the Confederacy lost the Civil War.
My cousin reminded me of my comment because the flag no longer hangs in his son’s room. And he sent a picture of that sweet boy at a recent protest holding a “No Justice, No Peace” sign. That’s a faster maturing than I had. I felt a particular pride in hanging a Confederate Battle Flag in my Freshman dorm room. I considered it a symbol of my Southern home. But I’d never considered, or ever been told, the flag’s other symbolism. Not only had I never had a black friend, I’d never had any opportunity to have a black friend. My flag came down by the end of Freshman year.
Dr. King wrote: “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” As devastating as recent events have been, I’ve been more encouraged than ever in my life at the possibility of creating lasting change. We will arrive at justice sooner if we cooperate in love, and never give in.
Mr. Churchill concluded his 1941 speech thus:
“Do not let us speak of darker days: let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days; these are great days—the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race.”
Dum Spiro Spero. I don’t know how it’d change the Latin, but my new interpretation is While I breathe, I will offer hope. I invite you to join me, to breathe hope into the movements to change the inequities in our world.
Let us not waste our breath.
