Dazed and wounded
If you are not a subscriber to HBO, you can’t watch this amazing, emotional interview. That will be a shame because it’s one of the best I’ve ever seen.
As the interview began, about 3:30 in and several minutes before this clip, the Axios journalist, Alexi McCammond, became unexpectedly emotional and couldn’t continue speaking, so the Mayor comforted her and allowed her time to compose herself, filling the silence and “saving” her.
And yet, intuitively, just a few minutes later in this interview, in the clip you see above, Alexi understood that she should remain silent as the Mayor felt her own grief. The silence made it more powerful.
Here’s the thing…
We are all raw with emotion right now.
We are treading for our lives in a sea of grief, submerged over and over every single day in unendurable loss — the unnecessary loss of hundreds of thousands of lives from Covid, the loss of our innocence, or blindness, to the savage injustices imposed on our fellow Americans simply for the color of their skin, the loss of hope itself, the fear of the massive fracture in our social structures here, the sense that our country is tearing itself apart.
It’s a lot.
It feels overwhelming at times. And so, many of us find ourselves constantly on the verge of tears.
Don’t be afraid to talk about what’s happening all around you.
Don’t be afraid of occasional silence.
And never be afraid to show emotion.
Emotion is what brings out our humanity and compassion.
And we need all the compassion we can muster right now.
It has been so long since we’ve seen a leader model compassion for us.
It’s time, again.