My 6yo son attends a public school and when I was picking him up one day, I overheard a few older children having a discussion and while I missed the general context of the conversation, I heard one girl say, “I have the right to be uncomfortable.”
This struck me as profound in several ways. First, it is incredibly empowering for a young girl to talk about her rights and with such assertion. Second, I started to think about what right she was talking about. Simply the concept of recognizing that we all have strong emotions and sometimes they aren’t clean cut and uncomfortable is the best way to describe how we are feeling.
I started to think about why making space for discomfort is so important. It’s a holding space for sorting through emotions. A space to disagree with the norm. An honest reflection of discontent with an idea or circumstance in front of us. A chance to say, “this doesn’t work for me.” It demands that people around us consider our confidence in questioning the status quo. We don’t have to take what is simply because it is presented to us. We can push back and let the world know that we aren’t ok with how things are. We don’t have to solve what is but we can say, “hold it right there, I’m having some feelings about this.”
And when a small child says something this profound, I think of hope. For the future of change, careful consideration, and challenging the agenda.
I didn’t feel uncomfortable in that moment. Instead I felt an overwhelming comfort in the notion that the future recognizes the opportunity that lies within declaring, “I have the right to be uncomfortable.”
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