I’ve started this post a dozen times in as many different ways. I am flailing. I read the news this morning before getting out of bed, and it left me gasping like a fish on the dock. I don’t need to refer to what news I mean, because if you’re reading this today you already know and if you’re reading this next week it is sure to be something else. The specific news is not the point. The enormity of it is, the way it leaves us breathless and struggling for a solid handhold.
Mostly I write at this place when I am sure of the way forward. When I feel I have something substantial to offer. Today, all I have is “me too.” If you are terrified of where this might be going, I am right there with you. More than once this year I have been relieved that my mother died before the election, because the thought of her wondering if Medicaid and Medicare would be gutted to the point that her kidney disease would take over, if she would have to figure out even more ways to creatively food shop, if she would lose her home—it is intolerable. Yet, this country is full of parents and grandparents like my mom. Hungry children. People being victimized because of the color of their skin or who/how they love. The poor, the homeless. I fear for all of us right now, but especially for those of us who are already barely hanging on.
Not that the rest of us are safe. We’re not. One true thing about the human condition is that it can change with one fall, one phone call, one layoff, one breast self-exam. And even barring an accident of mechanics or genetics, you will someday be old. We are all in danger. Those of us who are afraid are not paranoid; we are paying attention.
Yet, fear is an unpredictable beast as well. It can be weaponized and turned against us, and I struggle to not let that happen. I suppose that is why I’m writing right now instead of lying in bed scrolling and swiping through a panoply of terrible news. Because being paralyzed is not a viable option.
I was reminded this week that there are two motivators in life. That’s it. One, two. There is that fear I’ve been writing about this morning, and there is love. Love feels better, and I surely do strive for it, but fear isn’t automatically bad. Sometimes they are intertwined. It is my love for humanity combined with my fear that the power-hungry will eat us alive if we do not check them that keeps me going.
Whatever works. Because the most important most important MOST IMPORTANT thing is that we keep fighting. We musn’t give in to fatigue or hopelessness. We simply MUSN’T. That is one thing I DO know.
My apologies for this stream-of-consciousness unorganized mess. I just … had to. I’m sorry, also, that I do not have any solid answers. All I have is just a hand to hold if you need one and my small voice that I hope is powerful when I add it to all the other small voices. And this:
You are not obligated to complete the work.
But neither are you free to abandon it.
