calplemonswgs - Tumblr blog

[calplemonswgs]

ALPHABET

Things I’ve Learned

A is for Acceptance. Learning to accept myself for who I am, and others for who they are. 

B is for Bonding. Find the time to grow closer to the people around me. Building my relationships. 

C is for Character.  Taking my character seriously, and taking pride in how I carry myself and my reputation. D is for Differences. Understanding those differences is what brings people together, and makes me, me. E is for Example. I need to lead by example. What I do will cause a ripple effect to the people that look up to me whether I care if they do or not. F is for Family. Making sure to cherish the moments I have with my family, and realizing they will always be there for me at the end of the day. G is for Giving. I need to give more of myself to positive things, and less of the negative. Give more of my time to something that will benefit everyone, including myself. I need to not be so selfish with what I do have and offer it to help others. H is for Help. It’s okay to ask for help. It’s okay to need help and it doesn’t make me weak. I is for Intentional. Be more intentional with my relationships. Make sure that others know that I care how they are and how they are doing. J is for Jesus. I need to trust in him more. Not to lose sight of his plan for me, but to also trust in his plan for me as well. K is for Kudos. Give props to others. I don’t need to be the only one with the good ideas, and it’s okay to accept an extra set of hands. It is also okay to not be the only one that is successful. L is for Letting Go. I need to let go of the things that bring me down. Whether that is a situation, a relationship with someone, or a bad memory. I need to let go and move on. M is for More. I shouldn’t settle. It’s okay to want more for yourself, but I shouldn’t let myself get complacent with where I am now because it isn’t necessarily bad. N is for Now. Make myself present. Stop focusing on the mistakes of the past, and don’t stress too much on the unknown of the future. O is for Optimism. I need to look at things through an optimistic lense. Remember that sometimes it takes the bad to appreciate the good, and know that there is always light at the end of the tunnel. P is for People. Find people that encourage myself, and people I can encourage as well. Grow with them, and build each other up. Q is for Question. It’s okay to have questions. It’s okay to question things you don’t understand. It’s okay to ask questions, and it’s also okay to learn the answers to questions you don’t want to know. R is for Richland. The school I went to. The experiences I had there helped shape me into who I am now. I’ve learned from mistakes, and it has given my future more promise of doing things the right way. It’s also where I started to find my true self. S is for Surrounding. Surround myself with good people, and be someone that people want to surround themselves with. T is for Treasure. Value the relationships that I have over material items. That is the true treasure. U is for Unique. Be proud of what makes me unique. Don’t try to change myself. V is for Victory. Find victories in the small things. Give myself some props for making progress in any situation. It’s important to recognize my progress rather than thinking there’s so much left to do. W is for Wandering. Don’t be too scared to wander. Get out of my comfort zone and see things that I want to see. Wander out of the same place I have always been. X is for Xaern. Xaern means to enjoy the time that you are having. I need to remember to enjoy myself where I am at. Focus on the present and be present. Y is for Youthful. As I get older I need to make sure I keep in touch with my “child” side. Don’t lose my youthfulness over the stresses of young adulthood. Z is for Zero. There is zero time to look back to the past. I have made so much progress and it is important to keep moving forward. 

[calplemonswgs]

Art & Activism

UNlearn the things you have been domesticated to learn. What could that mean for you? Text is everything, life is art: how do you begin to unpack this for yourself?

Growing up I was always taught to love others, and show them the love that I have been shown whether that was from God, friends, or family. As I grew up and got out into the real world, it did not take long to realize that not everyone did this too. It is very interesting how I began to shift into the way of everyone else, and that even though my parents taught me one thing, I learned from the world. It is so easy to let everything around you persuade the way you operate, and the things that you believe in. There are many instances where I judged someone way too soon, or I chose not to like them over something small or untrue, but after I had gotten to know them I felt much differently about them. I think the art of this is in the messes that you make along the way. Everyone learns how they should live their life one way or another, but it takes years of mistakes and losses until you personally figure it all out on your own. The art is in the living and the learning. It’s about growing from past experiences and learning to live your life differently, openly, and for the betterment of everyone around you.

[calplemonswgs]

Borderlands

Dive deep into yourself and reflect: what are your borders? Spaces of inbetween-ness? What are components of your testimonio? What would be some components of your own graphic novel book? Alphabet? 

When I think about my borders I immediately think of where I have put up my walls. Times when I have purposefully shut out friends, families, and relationships in order to protect myself. Where do these borders come from? What about my past can influence my present so much that it feels like I need borders? My borders protect me. They protect me from things that I don’t trust. The funniest thing about personal borders is that people use them as a defense mechanism to keep themselves from being hurt, but it is usually once you let down your guard that you truly find happiness. There is the fine line of giving up enough of yourself, and letting yourself truly open up, taking that leap of faith that allows you to let your guard down. 

Personally, my borders usually revolve around sacrificing, control, faith and trust. I have had to learn that in order to develop how I handle situations around these main topics I have needed to ease my way into each of them. It is truthfully very difficult to do so, and understand that I can’t always be in control of my surroundings. If I had a graphic novel it would most likely consist of pictures of myself behind the scenes. When I let myself process through the way I feel, but also with a mix of the good side that I let everyone see. Something to show every side of myself and not just the public side.

[calplemonswgs]

Latinx Archive

Creating community through vulnerability and wandering: imagine beyond what you have been conditioned to think. 

Vulnerability is a concept that immediately makes the mind think “weak,” but in all reality, one of the strongest things a person can do is be vulnerable. Unfortunately people have grouped their past hardships with a place of vulnerability, and this has built a barrier between all people with individual differences. Learning to accept one another would be a huge first step in understanding where people come from. Especially with everything that has been brought to surface within the last couple of years with the black lives matter movement and the #MeToo movement just being a couple of examples, it shows that a little understanding goes a long way. It has shown how much asking the hard questions and opening up about the difficulties of the past can bring people together now. It is vital for everyone to get on board in the progression of acknowledging that each person is different, and that is every bit of the reason why it should bring us together. People are taught that they should stick up for their own, and as time has gone by the message seems to have been twisted. It has gone for having your family’s back into its us against them. This has created so many problems, and made each issue that has surfaced a political battle. However, once more people are able to understand each other, there would be far less issues arising that could be turned into a political battle. The key to a successful society is understanding the differences of your neighbors, and looking to accept them.

[calplemonswgs]

Revolutions

Reflect/engage/en act with ancestral knowledge.... what could this mean? What does this mean to you? 

The interesting thing about ancestors is that their history is your history. Somehow or another there are things that are not in my past, but it’s in my history. When I get up in the morning I wake up, get dressed, and get on with my day. However, it wasn’t always this simple. No matter who you are, or where you come from, the people who made us shaped the way that we each live our individual lives. My parents would not have raised me the way that they had if their parents did raise them in the way that they had, and so on and so on. 

In my own ancestry, there is not much excitement, but there are a lot of differences. On my mom’s side of the family they were raised through generations through a very conservative stance. This obviously led to the values and morals that my mother carries. On the other hand, my dad’s side was the complete opposite. They weren’t as strict as my mother’s side, and their differences brought them somewhere in the middle with how I was raised. As I have sat down, and thought about this topic I have realized that it has all been a domino effect for generations. Each and every decision anyone has made all comes full circle as to how I do things now. It’s the reason why I wake up, get dressed and get on with my day the way that I do.

[calplemonswgs]

In-between-ness

E is for Equality

As a white man the biggest issue I have faced on the topic of equality is that it is something that I haven’t had to see. What I mean by that is that no one has ever treated me unfairly based on the color of my skin or my gender. It wasn’t until in the last year and a half or so that I realized that this issue may be surrounding me more than I thought, and not because I didn’t care about the situation, but because I was oblivious. I couldn’t see or understand what had been happening because I wasn’t the one being hurt by the situation. It is so important that such strong movements have been happening in our country to fix the inequality that is being felt.

I know that race is such a big issue in our country right now, but women of all races are feeling this oppression too. They have always pushed for equal rights and equal pay, and it wasn’t until I started working that I realized how serious this issue was. I worked one job in highschool and I made $11 an hour. For a highschool student that felt pretty good, but then I found out that my manager, a woman a couple of years out of college, was making $11.25 an hour. She was doing so much more work than I was, and worked there for so much longer, but was making 25 cents more than me. It is something that needs to continue to be addressed, and it would help bring society together even more if women felt they were as important as men.

[calplemonswgs]

Testimonios

Sacrifice. How much of myself do I need to let go of? What morals do I need to let go of? What do I disagree with? What do you disagree with? Control. How much control do I deserve? Who rightfully has the control? How do I earn control? How did you earn control? Faith. How do we know what to believe? What happens if you’re wrong? What happens if you’re right? Is seeing believing, or is believing seeing? Truth. Who really knows the truth? How do you trust what you hear? Should I trust what you say? What is actually true?

Growth. You don’t grow if you lose too much of yourself. You don’t grow if you can’t find a balance with control. You don’t grow if you don’t take a leap of faith. You don’t grow if you don’t trust.

[calplemonswgs]

World-Travelling

D is for....... Desaparecidos/dis appeared . How Can We Travel Borders? What Ethical Considerations Do We Need to Be Mindful of? How Do You Travel Borders?

In the summer of 2017 and then again in the summer of 2018, I went to Brazil on a mission trip to teach English through using the bible to one of the local churches in Rio De Janeiro. A couple of weeks before our first trip, we were taught the do’s and don'ts of what is socially acceptable, and when certain things were appropriate. I remember sitting in that meeting thinking, “is it really that different over there, and why would it be such a big deal?” Once we had gotten to Brazil, and out into the community it was quickly evident that they think and process things differently than we do here. For example, it is very common for people in America to snap their fingers and clap the side of their fist when they are sitting around, or waiting in line. In Brazil, this action is their “middle finger,” but considered much worse, and they take so much more offense to it. Waiting in line for our food at the mall, I was doing this, and these two gentlemen came up to me and politely explained what it was that I was doing. I felt so badly for what I was doing because I had no idea that I was flipping off however many people had walked past me.

 I think that understanding things that are different in other countries is very important when you are in their territory. American’s as a whole, have a real issue about not understanding that they are not the “top dog.” Even when Americans are out of America, for some reason, it just doesn’t click that there are different cultures out there with things that just aren’t okay. There is a reason that Americans are so easy to spot out of the country, and that people have the negative opinions on us that they do. Once other cultures are better understood it would make such a difference in how Americans are perceived. It only illustrates the importance of respect that much more.

[calplemonswgs]

Transformative Justice

C is For Courage. What is Courage? How Can Transformative Justice Be? How Can We Use It?

Transformative justice is how to respond to abuse and violence without leading to more violence. In this form, it is not just about making things right, but by showing that violence doesn’t necessarily need to be used to resolve problems, but could be the source of the problem. Transformative justice is the simplest, and more pure form of justice, because it is all about justice without losing its value by physically combating the issue.

There seems to be many reasons that you can exercise this way of peace. Martin Luther King Jr. could have been the best example of what is achievable through transformative justice. It is no secret the amount of progress that he brought to America, and who knows where we would be as a society without him doing what he did. But why does this work? How is something as non threatening as words and protesting get the importance of the message across?

This shows the importance of what people can do when they come together for something that they believe in. It could even be more powerful, and this is because they don’t use violence. In MLK Jr’s case, African Americans had faced many years of being wrongfully treated, and beaten. Knowing the other end of that violence, it was still not a part of the protest to bring that violence out on the people that did it to them first. That alone brought an entirely new form of justice, and paved the way for how African Americans would be treated after this. Even in today’s time, there are still these types of protests happening to right the wrongs of the past and present.

[calplemonswgs]

From the Margins

B is For.. Borders

Something that I have seen commonly is that there are many struggles that women have faced that are overlooked by other women just because of their physical differences. For a while, all women felt similar issues, but once white women began to gain rights of their own, they left women of color in their dust. Many white women have never given the energy into understanding the struggles of their sisters, and this would be beneficial to all women if this were to be changed. Understanding the problem is the best way to get around to solving the problem. 

For a long time, women of color were not allowed to go to certain schools, vote, having to work for significantly less money, among many other issues. For other women to at least understand that different women have had to go through such hardships, it would help create a much more open society. The biggest problem is that everyone assumes that they have all the knowledge of what is right or wrong, and for people to acknowledge someone else’s struggles would make a world of difference.

[calplemonswgs]

Genealogy of WOC Feminisms

A is For... Accountability. Who are we without colonization?

Who are we without colonialism? Marissa Cummings answered this question that through her own heritage there is an inaccurate depiction of how Native Americans are referred to. They were here before anyone else, but “Native American” is how the government has addressed them. It was very interesting to hear this perspective that they were here before America was America, so why would they be called Native Americans? Over the last couple of years this has become very evident in our society that there are so many groups of people that were treated unfairly in the past, but celebrated for what happened now. Without colonization it is very unclear what could possibly be our reality in America, but I think there would be a definite shift in population percentages between different races. I also think that race would be less of an issue in our society, and people would be much easier to be open and supportive of people who were different from you. 

As a white male in today’s time it doesn’t add up to me that colonization was even a real thing, and my first introduction to this was from one of my grandparent’s friends Kea. He was an Indian, although I’m not exactly sure of his dissent, but he would always joke with my grandparents that they were going to take his house if he wasn’t careful. I must have heard him make this joke over twenty times, but until reflecting back on it now I never understood what he thought was so funny. Obviously he was able to joke about this, but I can understand so clearly now why it is so offensive to them. Myself, nor anyone in my family, has ever had to deal with this baggage of what has happened to people that were the same blood as me. Learning the history like this is very uncomfortable, and it is supposed to be. It’s eye-opening, and it makes you want to dive deeper into learning about what has happened, but also looking for a way to be more understanding that terrible things have happened to their relatives.

[calplemonswgs]

Settler Colonialism

Who am I? Who are we?

When hearing the question of who I am, my initial thought is that I am me, Calvin Plemons. There is so much more to me than this though. I’m from Fort Worth, Texas, and I have lived there all the way up until I moved to Lubbock to attend Texas Tech. For the longest time I found my identity in sports, and the leadership roles I carried on and off the field. After my senior year of highschool, and football season was over, I found myself missing sports in my life. This resulted in me picking up rugby which I rolled over into college as well, and played for my first two years at Texas Tech. 

From a very young age I was put into sports, and I also was put into leadership roles in these sports. This constructed me as this all took place in my younger, developmental years that molded my identity, and personality. It was not even something that I thought about in my identity, and that was just because of how present it was in my everyday life. This was very important in my decision to step away from rugby, because my body was getting so beaten up, but I had to make a decision that went against what was felt to be already programmed inside of me. 

Through playing rugby, and getting to meet so many different people that would be our opponents, it showed me in a first hand perspective that there can be so much more communication without using language. Rugby is very international, and that stays constant throughout all levels of play. I saw so many different players, as well as their families, from all over the world and got to know them more personally. This gave me perspective of how this game is more than just something to fill the void of playing sports, but it gets such large communities of people together rooting for the same team. Playing rugby in Texas showed me how open other players from different countries were to accepting these Americans adopting their sport. It showed a new perspective of communication through teamwork, and support.