What is we gon do?

An essential question that we all, internally or externally, ask ourselves when we run into a point at which some game changer has occurred, or, we simply need to make an important decision.

Coping skills are defined as methods that a person uses to deal with stressful situations. Anyone who works in education can attest to the ability or inability of children to develop or retain coping skills, particularly those with special needs.

“Social & Emotional learning” is a hot-button topic right now. I, as a historian and sociologist, can attest that we’ve have reached a point where we realize the ways in which society has developed and underdeveloped, neglected, forgone, and in many ways, demonized coping skills.

The cult of the individual.

The cult of “I”…entitlement.

Or perhaps, these issues were always here and we didn’t take the time to examine them until recently.

Folks without coping skills overreact. they lash out. they make victims of themselves for which the rest of us must pay.

Folks were led to believe that they could go to school, work hard, and that some magnificent job would be waiting for them upon reaching adulthood and/or graduating a university. that they would truly be the next leaders in the same old system. and when those delusions were not met, they lashed out and camped out in parks all across the country for months on end, yelling at financial buildings and yelling Black folks off the mic.

Folks believe that the earth is flat.

Because, who should believe yt science and yt narratives, albeit, worthy of mistrust.

Folks for whom society has lost use in their traditional capacity of brut labor, are also unable to measure up to the pervasive, far reaching, underdeveloping standards of masculinity that were never created to include them in the first place. they are left directionless and listless. They are overly sensitive; yet, emotionally unavailable. Supported by popular music and culture that promotes nursing this depression with substances that will, without a doubt, kill you.

Folks believe that the middle passage never happened.

They ask rhetorical questions on social media to stir emotion and jar people into a debate like, “where are all the slave ships now,” implying that they no longer exist or cannot be found. folks who have not been outside of their immediate zip codes, i would bet, much less having actually researched the answer to their question or having visited a museum at all, or using practicality and realizing that a ship that trafficked human chattel, would logically be used to traffic other cargo; the humans, our ancestors, were cargo, like any other.

Folks believe that african americans are not african.

Because after all, who would want to be part of a population of people who we’ve always been taught were ignorant, backward and devilish. a people who were and are still being conquered. It is of the utmost importance to one’s self esteem to believe that one is somehow superior and better than whoever yt society has deemed primitive and weak. Hey, you can always just believe you’re Egyptian anyway, or Hebrew, or of the first nation’s peoples, or a moor which actually more likely enslaved your ancestors, or whatever would be easier to align with.

Folks run and rip through mate after mate, and most of their lives, still concentrating on the teens or early 20s that they never fully lived.

Folks (men) terrorize their mates, families and just plain ole women in the neighborhood or on the street, who are most vulnerable to them because they feel so entitled to their bodies, attention and lives, without simple acknowledgement of their humanity, individuality and agency, respectfully, which would actually likely achieve what they desire. They harass, they demean, they stalk, they rape, they molest, they beat, they murder. They create whole social media and YouTube portals dedicated to the degradation of women.

Coping skills are so important.

I realize that.

You don’t realize how important until you encounter so many adults who lack it. They cannot handle, no. They cannot handle, not yet. They cannot handle change. They chase and believe things that simply don’t exist beyond their own mind’s making, because that’s an easier reality for them to deal with.

THAT is how they cope.

Incapable of appreciating what’s right in front of them, or working with what’s in front of them. Mind you, I’m not saying that you can never be critical or express disappointment, but in my experience, if you can’t appreciate what you have, you’ll destroy everything that you’re blessed with thereafter. Only adding to the graveyard of ghosts for you to chase.

There is lemonade. There is beauty in our people and in our culture as it has developed. It is your eye that will not see it, for trying to appease…who?

There is another way. A way that begs so much more oomph and creativity out of you, fortunately or unfortunately. Adapt. That creative soul is the person we need. Not the grown child.