I’m about to show 60 in simply over every week and I maintain enthusiastic about what it means to nonetheless be right here. Not simply alive, however nonetheless myself, nonetheless recognizable to the values I claimed many years in the past, nonetheless strolling ahead with function, even on days when the streets have gone quiet.
It hit me exhausting on a latest flight. A type of six—or eight-hour treks with a layover, heading off to face on one other stage or sit in a technique assembly. No person counts the prep calls, the missed particular moments at house, the lengthy journey days wrapped round a single hour at a podium. Unhealthy beds, chilly meals and a human again that may not endure all of it. Jammed into seat 18E, I felt a flash of resentment so sizzling it startled me. It was not like me. Then I laughed below my breath: after all I’m resentful. I’m nearly 60, and my physique feels each little bit of it.
I wasn’t promised 60. Black males on this nation be taught early that longevity will not be a given. It’s one thing we carve out of resistance, stubbornness, or sheer luck. So, I don’t take this calmly. Not the breath in my lungs. Not the load in my bones. Not the areas I get to take up.
I really feel it most getting up and out of compact automobiles, decrease core, gradual to uncurl. Typically, I merely stand within the yard simply respiration within the chilly or warmth, as a result of it means I’m nonetheless right here.
I’ve lived sufficient to know that survival will not be the identical as freedom. I’ve felt that pressure in my physique—within the tightness of my chest when the world demanded stillness, and I wished to scream.
When my warnings of what was coming to America made me an outsider in my very own social actions. These occasions the place I used to be mocked generally, undercut, handled like I used to be breaking the collective spell that wrongly argued that demographics alone would save us—at the same time as the bottom shifted below all our toes.
I’ve heard that very same pressure in music, particularly in “Do Nothing” by The Specials. A track that doesn’t simply play—it haunts. It holds the ache of doing what you’re advised whereas understanding none of it suits. It’s what alienation appears like when it’s been sharpened right into a beat. That monitor got here out in 1980, when unemployment was hovering, Thatcher and Reagan have been gutting working-class cities, and youngsters like me have been beginning to really feel the temporary floor of racial justice give approach beneath our toes. It’s the very track that lastly satisfied me to depart Lengthy Seashore, Calif., for Oregon in 1986.
Ska and punk weren’t simply sounds—they have been survival kits, methods to call what was fallacious and dance via it anyway. That’s what hooked me—the uncooked defiance of a beat that refused to interrupt, even when all the pieces else did. It was the music that taught me it was okay to mourn, rage and nonetheless discover pleasure amid the non-public, financial and social earthquakes. And of these occasions, there have been to be many.
And nonetheless—nonetheless, I’ve lived.
I’ve executed effectively on this life, and I’ve additionally gotten it fallacious. I’ve let my satisfaction communicate too loudly. I’ve stayed silent when my voice might need mattered. There are individuals I’ve disenchanted. Folks I’ve harm. Some I by no means acquired to make issues proper with. That sits with me. I attempt, every single day, to dwell extra truthfully within the shadow of what I didn’t get proper.
Most days I now take into consideration watching my very own subculture get exploited by political agendas that by no means noticed us as greater than expendable fodder. It took me a decade to actually see it, and one other decade to seek out the heart to say it out loud—afraid I’d be written off or blamed for fracturing the one tradition that seems like house. As a substitute, I steered my very non-infinite vitality towards whoever another person deemed “most susceptible,” too scared to call that my very own individuals. The forgotten, the shunned, those handled as uncomfortable and inconvenient after they had no political use, have been a few of the most susceptible, too. I nonetheless see these faces. Some are actually gone. Some simply misplaced. Missed probabilities, missed truths. They hang-out me.
However I’ve additionally identified pleasure that I didn’t assume was mine to have. Loves which have remade me. These uncommon moments of absolute readability—on levels, on sidewalks, in dialog, in stillness.
I keep in mind a drive from Chicago to Toronto, a automobile stuffed with household from Portland, Phoenix, and Chicago, on our option to see The Oppressed, Worry Metropolis and The Prowlers. A household reunion with no beefs, simply nice music, low cost drinks, reggae rolling via the audio system and laughter that made the miles look like nothing. I keep in mind nights in Lengthy Seashore, Eugene, Portland, Seattle, Chicago, Blue Island, Oakland and San Francisco—heat air and somebody’s laughter folding me into a way of house I by no means anticipated, however at all times hoped for after I was a pre-teenager.
I’ve been a part of issues that mattered. I’ve fought for individuals and been modified by individuals. I’ve danced in rooms the place I forgot the load I carry and simply let the music maintain me.
Shoulder to shoulder with individuals I might by no means see once more, slipping and falling right into a crew of Irish skinheads amid a live performance within the coronary heart of London, my whiskey spraying everybody down—then being picked up, dusted off, and handed a beer. Sweat working down my backbone, skinheads, punks and casuals urgent in, all of us shouting the identical phrases again on the stage.
There’s a line in “Do Nothing” that at all times finds me:
“Folks say to me / simply be your self
It is unnecessary / to comply with trend
How may I / be anyone else
I don’t attempt / I acquired no cause”
I’ve spent most of my life navigating that paradox, being advised to be actual whereas understanding the world can’t deal with my fact. And nonetheless, I’ve stayed true. That’s my quiet insurrection.
At 60, I do know the rating. The common life expectancy for Black males on this nation is about 72 years. Twelve years left—give or take.
They by no means inform you that in a society that expects Black males to be a “younger lion” eternally. A society that desires you to maintain carrying the load as if your physique gained’t break down, your coronary heart gained’t get heavy, your vitality gained’t dip. A society that expects a lot from Black males and sometimes offers little in return. It calls for youth with out regard for longevity. They deal with us like we’re meant to run on empty, as in the event that they haven’t already drained us dry. And nonetheless, we’re anticipated to maintain exhibiting up.
However that’s not my story. I reject it. This chapter is mine to write down, not theirs to dictate. And I refuse to let age—my expertise, my knowledge, my earned relaxation—be handled as one thing to disregard. I refuse to shrink into that narrative. I’m right here, nonetheless burning, however I’m additionally demanding the house to only be, with out the load of anybody else’s expectations.
Sixty doesn’t really feel like a end line. It seems like a checkpoint. A spot to pause and ask: Am I nonetheless strolling within the path of who I say I need to be? Am I nonetheless selecting substance over spectacle, connection over ego, justice over consolation? I would like the reply to be sure.
And if I’m nonetheless right here to ask once more at 70, I hope the reply continues to be sure.
I hope anybody studying this—whoever you might be—sees themselves within the areas between these phrases. Within the contradictions. Within the regrets. Within the hope. Within the noise and the silence. I hope it reminds you: it’s not too late to come back house to your self.
Sixty is its personal type of grace. It’s the load of outdated scars and the shock of recent joys. It’s listening to a track out of your youth and feeling each model of your self dance inside you. It’s the quiet satisfaction of getting survived what may have damaged you, and the tender ache for individuals and locations lengthy gone. Sixty is understanding that after all of the miles, all of the errors, all of the small, hard-fought victories—that is nonetheless your life, valuable and unfinished.
Perhaps that’s the purpose of reaching 60—to not have all of it found out, however to lastly maintain your personal story with a type of tender reverence. To see that each fallacious flip, each late-night dialog, each heartbreak and each triumph wove one thing unmistakably yours. To face right here, nonetheless curious, nonetheless open, nonetheless keen to be shocked. If there’s any lesson at this age, it’s that the guts retains stretching to carry extra: extra forgiveness, extra laughter, extra of the messy, wonderful enterprise of being alive.
So, right here’s to 60. To the individuals who held me up and those I let down. To the songs that advised the reality when the world lied. To the rhythms that stitched me again collectively. To the hearth that also burns, quietly however unmistakably.
I’m right here, nonetheless transferring and I hope you might be as effectively.
Nonetheless sincere.
Nonetheless defiant.
Nonetheless listening to “Do Nothing”—and listening to all the pieces I would like.
Eric Okay. Ward is a longtime civil rights strategist and activist, identified for confronting white nationalism, antisemitism, and anti-Black racism. He’s the Govt Vice President at Race Ahead, a Senior Fellow on the Southern Poverty Regulation Middle, and a recipient of the Civil Braveness Prize for his work defending democracy.
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