I recently finished a book, Between The World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. It was a book my sister gave to me, a book that she read herself to foster her empathy for the black community, always and especially in the last year of strife. Much of this book made me feel quite guilty. Although my father was Thai and it can certainly be said that he faced no shortage of discrimination on that account, I feel that in many ways I was "brought up hopelessly, tragically, deceitfully, to believe that [I am] white." The innumerable privileges, comforts, and opportunities I enjoy were all built on the backs of slavery, that I simply cannot deny.

This isn't particularly news to me. Long have I known that I am living a life rarified by coincidences and ancestral injustices that have given me far more second chances and legs-up than I could ever deserve. Long have I felt guilty about it. The only justification comes from my mother — white, also a child of privilege — whose own mother said to her, "You were put on this earth to make a difference."

My mother is a sustainability consultant, a climate activist tackling the most pressing issue to have ever faced humanity. She is making a difference. I must be the same then, right?

All my conscious life I have despaired at its lack of global impact. I went to school to become a software developer because I was convinced that software would be my ticket to changing the world, a few hundred keystrokes in my bedroom at a time. Having entered the industry, my dreams feel predictably far-fetched. Software at the level I can produce it feels far too capricious, the underlying frameworks too ephemeral to affect any lasting impact.

I come back to this existential despair almost on a daily basis. What Coates highlighted for me was how lucky I am to feel this despair in the first place! Throughout his letter, Coates describes the plight of those who fear their very bodies being taken from them.

The fear was there in the extravagant boys of my neighborhood, in their large rings and medallions, their big puffy coats and full-length fur-collared leathers, which was their armor against their world. They would stand on the corner of Gwynn Oak and Liberty, or Cold Spring and Park Heights, or outside Mondawmin Mall, with their hands dipped in Russell sweats. I think back on those boys now and all I see is fear, and all I see is them girding themselves against the ghosts of the bad old days when the Mississippi mob gathered 'round their grandfathers so that the branches of the black body might be torched, then cut away. The fear lived on in their practiced bop, their slouching denim, their big T-shirts, the calculated angle of their baseball caps, a catalog of behaviors and garments enlisted to inspire the belief that these boys were in firm possession of everything they desired.

When the issue of survival is as pressing as to be all-consuming, when you have to be on guard and conscious of your every move on every walk home from school, there is hardly room for anything else. There is unfathomable distance between you and the world, and "some inscrutable energy preserves the breach." To worry about changing that world, that unknown entity light-years away, is unthinkable.

The separation between world and self that Coates describes made me think of our ability to affect change as having to pass through concentric circles of influence. First, we must make a difference for ourselves. Then our family. Then our friends, our local community, our nation, and finally our world. When the oxygen masks drop, put on your own before helping the person next to you.

I was born without an interminable distance between the world and me, and for so long I have measured my success only on that highest scale. What this letter made me realize, though, is that doesn't mean I can neglect the circles in-between. In this moment, most of all, I cannot neglect myself. The irony is palpable.

I learned this lesson in particular during my last year in University, and not because of the pandemic. That year, I had a friend that I thought really needed my help. Coming from an abusive family, they suffer from severe depression and have struggled with suicide attempts their entire life. As I came to know this person, I felt compelled to exercise my privilege and "save" them. I don't know now what portion of this compulsion was compassion and what hubris, but at the time it felt like the only thing to do.

Violating my lease, I took them in to my apartment. I waded into the murky waters of what quickly became a dangerously co-dependent situation without any thought of my personal boundaries, neglecting myself in the pursuit of saving my friend. It was a year fraught with crises, night terrors, trips to the hospital. I knew the whole time that I wasn't going to come out unscathed, and I didn't.

I began then to feel a frequent frustration at my own corporeal reality. I somehow wanted to be something formless, a force that could act upon its environment without regard to internal consequences. I felt that my body was a limitation, an ugly husk that prevented me from achieving the full potential of whatever was inside. I wished I could just not worry about that pesky first circle. I think I knew what was coming.

Having emerged, the husk and whatever is inside have certainly taken some hits. I know that I need therapy, that I need to work through what happened and regain my bearings inside my mind. Some days, I feel okay. Others, I'm rocked by intrusive thoughts the kinds with which I never thought I would have to contend; kinds that floor me, relentlessly dull my emotions, strip me of my ability to move. Those days are hard. On those days, I feel so far from making a difference.

My friend is okay. I know they still struggle, but they are alive and pushing themselves to achieve their goals. I'm so proud of them.

For my part, I need to allow myself to take some time on that smallest of circles, that circle which has my entire life been protected by privilege. I will improve the lives of my family, my friends, and my world; my time to make a difference will come. I know that and I know I am lucky to be able to say it. I just have to take some time to build myself up first.