I HATE changing the strings on my guitar.  It takes time: I have to go to the store, decide on and buy strings, drive back home, remove the old strings and then put the new strings on. However, that’s not the worst part. The worst part is tuning the new strings, because it creates this strange anxiety for me. As I begin to increase the tension on the strings, there comes a point where the strings aren’t in tune yet, but they’re stretched near their breaking point.

I begin to panic.

What if my tuner isn’t working right and I tighten the string too much and it breaks?

What if a string breaks, flies back in my face and I lose an eye?

I know this seems irrational. However, the truth is when you are stretching a string to get it in tune you don’t know where the breaking point is. You can feel the tension on the string and it often feels like it can’t stretch any further. It is this tension that creates power and gives the string the ability to harm if it breaks.  But, it is also this tension that allows the string to achieve its purpose.

There are ways in which the world resembles my process of changing guitar strings.  We as a society are being stretched and the tension is palpable. Groups like #blacklivesmatter, #concernedstudents1950 and #rockchalkinvisiblehawk are increasing the tension on our metaphorical strings. Their ears can hear that we are out of tune.

However, as the tension increases we, society, panic. We worry about what it means for me: my life, my power, and my livelihood. Our concern is for only one string, and we fail to realize that it’s not about notes but about chords. It’s about all six strings being in tune and working together to form the chords that make up our life song. Yes, we, humanity, are living one song.

This isn’t just about black and white, it’s about ALL the voices that are silenced or deemed unnecessary in our society – the very notes that are necessary to our song. I think the Chancellor of Kansas University said it best after being questioned about “Why can we not just call it what it is: anti-black racism.” as opposed to “issues of diversity”. Chancellor Gray-Little responded, ““There is more than one kind that is going on.”

We need each other.

Even though I’ve snapped guitar strings while tuning, it has never resulted in a serious injury, but I have read the injury stories. In the same way, I have never experienced discrimination because of my ethnicity or race, but I can read and hear the stories of those who have. I can choose to be stretched, to be fine tuned, even when it feels like stretching any further could result in a string breaking. When we feel like the tension is about to break us, we might be the closest to being in tune that we have ever been.