Hello beloveds, and Happy New Year,
Well things with the election have obviously turned out badly. Let's talk about it, and what we do next.
I've heard a lot of reactions to the election, but a few are particularly dominant, in my little corner of the universe at least. Most prominent of all is a numb, defeatist (or defeated?) apathy, bordering on dissociation and nihilism. There's also grim acceptance and lack of surprise, especially among younger people whose whole conscious political life has been dominated by the election's victor. It's pretty impossible to harbor any idealistic beliefs about what this country is when it has so consistently and clearly shown its true character for your whole adult life, after all. Less often, there's the tinny and frankly clueless "we just have to get through the next 4 years" camp, so divorced from reality and/or loudly telegraphing privilege as to be offensive. Of course there's a broad range of human reactions to such a calamitous turn of political events, so this isn't exhaustive--this is just what I'm hearing and observing in those around me.
To some degree or other, these are all understandable reactions. To some degree or other, they're also all attempts--deeply faulty attempts, but still--to self-regulate in intentionally dysregulating times. Evil can only achieve its aims with the consent, tacit or otherwise, of well-intentioned people. Each of those three mindsets is offering consent to evil through its inaction. They simply are not tenable.
I say this from a place of absolutely experiencing a lot of those feelings, especially the grim acceptance and numb dissociation-y bits. I'm hardly up to speed on the developments in the incoming administration's appointments or whatever "policy" they've been drum-beating about (is it racist? I'm guessing it's racist). I'm not actively trying to picture what the next however many years will look like in this country, in part because I'm not interested in helping the incoming administration terrorize me but also because I can't really take the ramped-up cortisol. I'm hardly coping or emotionally processing any of this perfectly, whatever that could possibly mean.
And, as I said in my last post, it is absolutely crucial, now more than ever, that we get off our asses, snap out of fatalism, despair, and defeat, and start fighting like hell, like the world depends on it, like every decent, beautiful thing we care about will not survive without it. With relentless, deep, abiding love.
What does that look like? Above all, it must be:
1) Sustainable
2) Important to you
3) Humble
4) With others, and
5) Imperfect
Sustainability is possibly the most important active ingredient. With an incoming regime that is explicitly built to at a minimum psychologically terrorize you and demoralize you, our energy will be under constant undermining assault. It might not be remotely realistic to do as much as you wish you could do, but better to consistently persist in whatever work you can do than to burn yourself out by doing too much in the first ~8 weeks of the next administration. Consistent, reliable work is vitally necessary, so be realistic and self-attuned in asking yourself how much time and effort you can dedicate to taking action.
Personal importance is perhaps the trickiest ingredient, as we are tragically spoiled for choices in this moment. You will not be able to contribute to every cause that matters to you without burning yourself out. You won't. Take some time to accept that.
No seriously. Take a moment, at least, to take that in. You can't help with everything that matters to you.
Instead, choose 1-3 things that matter the most to you. What most grabs your heart? That is your thing. Those are the hills you stake your flag on.
But what of the other things you care about? The reason sustainability is so crucial is that if we all do sustainable work, there will hopefully be enough of us to tackle everything.
Which brings us to humility. We are not the heroes of this story, our movements are. We are one little ant building a massive anthill, one little cog in a beautiful, messy, yet purposeful machine. As individuals, we will likely not accomplish much that is visible or monumental. Of course, that's because we're up against a lot, but also because it's hard to measure the catastrophes that don't occur because of communal effort. If we are in this in a contingent way, only insofar as we're guaranteed clear and shining moments of victory, we are prioritizing our own egoistic needs to be rewarded or to feel special over the needs of the causes and communities that matter to us. It's understandable to want to be the main character in the story, but as best we can we need to put that wish aside for the greater good.
We also need humility in order to collaborate with others who have been doing activism and organizing way longer than we have, with people who have wisdom, experience, and insight well beyond ours. It is much more effective to join a pre-existing organization or group dedicated to the causes you care about than it is to build something from scratch, because the latter means duplicating and thereby wasting precious energy that could be more efficiently utilized elsewhere, doing work alone is isolating and more likely to lead to burnout, and it risks all the pitfalls of being an activist-turned-savior. We all have such an exciting opportunity to learn from the people who have been organizing for years, and we must take it. Our job is to place ourselves at the ready in community with like-minded, like-hearted people and go where we're pointed.
And finally, we must radically embrace that our work will be imperfect. We can't accomplish everything we want to. We can't do as much as we wish we could. We'll get tired, distracted, and dragged into the demands of our personal and professional lives. We'll get things wrong and need to learn to do things differently and better. We'll have so much to learn. We can't see the future, and we don't know exactly what the best next step is. In accepting all of this, we are better prepared to nevertheless continue the beautiful, necessary, shared struggle.
So with all this in mind, what's next for you? What grabs your heart, and how will you fight like hell for it, and with who?
I can't wait to hear all about it. I'll see you out there in the fight.
Glad we're in it together.
{Heart}
