Theo Wilson

Theo Wilson is a poet and a YouTube activist who wondered about the people posting racist comments on his videos, and where they were getting their facts. So he adopted a pseudonym and joined their conversation. If y'all google his name there's plenty of information available and he gave an excellent Ted Talk that everyone should listen to, and then relisten to it with an open heart. When Uncle Bubba heard it he was struck by many things but one thing in particular, however, he'll share that in a moment. First here are some poignant excerpts from an interview Mr. Wilson did with Ted Talks. These excerpts will give you a glimpse into the caliber of person and the deep thinker that Mr. Wilson is.

"WILSON: When I went undercover, I found a lovely plethora of characters, luminaries like Milo Yiannopoulos, Richard Spencer, and David Duke. All of these guys were thought leaders in their own right, but over time, the alt-right movement ended up using their information to fuel their momentum. And I'm going to tell you what else led to the momentum of the alt-right - the left-wing's wholesale demonization of everything white and male.

One thing kept screaming at me through the subtext of those arguments, and that was, why should I be hated for who I cannot help but be? Now, was a black man in America, that resonated with me. I've spent so much time defending myself against attempts to demonize me and make me apologize for who I am, trying to portray me as something that I'm not, some kind of thug or gangster or menace to society. Unexpected compassion - wow. Never in a billion years did I think that I could have some kind of compassion for people who hated my guts.

WILSON: And let me be clear about the difference between compassion and sympathy. Compassion is my spiritual duty as a human being, but that's different than - well, a lot of people interpret that compassion as a sympathy. I don't have sympathy for them. You see, compassion figures out how you got to where you are. Sympathy is having compassion for where they ended up.

And that's a very, very key distinction that has to be made. I get how somebody could be born on that side of the divide and end up where they are. But I also get that we all have brains, and we can do our own bit of education, and we can figure out exactly what data points that we're missing. And why don't you care to do it? That was a question that I had.

WILSON: The most important thing that I think that we could get from this is that there is unhealed trauma on every side of the racial divide. There's trauma, man. And a lot of people talk about the trauma that black folks have, the post-traumatic slavery syndrome. But then there's also a trauma that white folks experienced, and that experience comes from the fact - and I made a video about this, about how slavery wounded white people.

You don't get to be a part of a force that did that much damage to other peoples without somehow having damage done to yourself at some level. Every time somebody saw somebody lynched, even if they were white, that was damage. If you witness a murder, that's therapy for life, right? One murder - right?

So what does it say when the whole culture gets a lynch mob out and goes hanging folks? You think little Billy, the first time he sees a black man burning from a tree, ain't going experience some kind of trauma? That's going to show up some kind of place, right? That - all of that has a cost. The great tragedy of racism is that we are all human, is that we all lose a piece of our humanity." (http://kuow.org/post/theo-ej-wilson-what-happens-when-black-man-goes-undercover-alt-right)

His statement about trauma on both sides is the thing that hit Bubbie like a hammer between the eyes. It was an epiphany! Thank you, Theo. Though the topic was racism, Bubbie suddenly realized that we all have PTSD in every area of our lives. To back up for a moment, to Uncle Bubba PTSD was something that happened to war veterans and victims of horrific accidents and such. But suddenly he realized that it is, in fact, a condition stemming from any event that an individual is unable to reconcile in their mind; its torturous, toxic thoughts. We all have these that layer upon layer all ingrown like the rings of a tree.

What's at the heart of your tree?

They can begin in childhood and depend on one's personality, environment, resilience and coping skills in avoiding more damage that life dishes out.  And life doesn't slow down to let us recuperate and fix things to make them right, at least within our own minds. Sometimes we are weighed down by one event when we're clobbered by another; bad things happen in 3s as Granny used to say. Bubbie supposes that this is why psychologists were invented, to help us work through these trauma, PTSD things before they became too full of themselves but that's a thought for another day; for now he wants to say that though we've all been damaged in some way, everything can heal and if y'all don't pick at the scab too much, that scar may not be deep. In Bubbie's view, look inside yourself and see if y'all can find those scabbed over wounds, the ones that haven't healed, have some compassion for your heart and find a way to get them healed; Jesus is a good place to start.