3 Ways to Keep Going (even when the world is on fire)
So let's say you've done what you can.
(Knowing you, I'm sure you did that first.)
You've donated to the cause, you've kept up on the news updates to stay informed, you've contacted representation, you've boosted voices that needed sharing.
And then you still have to go to work, and there's still a war, and there's still a house to clean, and a self to feed, and it seems like new legislation is dropping every day that threatens the most basic rights we hold dear, and also there are messes from before that still need help too.
You've done what you can, and yet there's a humongous looming cloud of all of what you, personally, can't.
It lingers, casting your day into gloom, applying pressure to your heart, making you wonder why anything you do could really matter in the face of it all.
What can a poem do to stop a war?
What can a painting do to save voting rights?
What can writing a song, balancing a spreadsheet, or following through on organizing a work event really do in the face of all this?
I started writing a book a few weeks ago, and for most of a day last week I couldn't write a single word. My thoughts were choked back in a stranglehold of depression, because if World War III really happens, who would ever read them?
What's the use of a story when it feels like absolutely everything is in crisis?
It felt egotistical—ridiculous even—to be doing anything that wasn't directly related to immediate survival or helping the causes.
If you've been feeling that way too, I offer this:
1.) We do not choose our gifts.
I would make the worst UN diplomat ever. I don't like wearing suits, I don't have patience for passive-aggressive power plays, and I am known to make fairly frequent use of a certain hand gesture indicating a certain self-gratifying sexual act when people are talking like...well...wankers. The thought of participating in politics any higher than the local level makes me want to hurl.
Me being me, I am clearly not going to be much help creating and implementing effective policies during a global crisis.
As much as I would love to swoop in with a dope cape and magic wand and make it all better, that's just white-savior programming talking. That's not a real option.
I may not have been given gifts of political ambition or diplomacy, but I can write like a motherfucker. So I will write. I will pour every drop of horror and hope from my heart into this story, and I don't care if it never sees the light of a bookstore—it's simply what I'm choosing to do in the face of all this.
Whatever your gifts are, even if there's not a clear connection you can see how they will help anyone in the grand scheme of things, use them.
Your gifts are yours for a reason, and good will come from them.
2.) Nothing is forever.
There are a lot of things that feel alarmingly precarious right now. It helps me to remember that bad things have happened in the past—absolutely hideously awful things—and we have progressed past them. Americans ended slavery, secured equal voting rights, overturned Jim Crow, and a thousand other steps towards a better life for all. While progress has come at a painful cost, change is always possible.
Where there's possibility, there is hope.
No laws are etched in stone for all time.
No conflicts last forever.
There will be an end to every issue on the table right now, followed by a fresh beginning. It might take a hell of a fight, but I know we are a country made of people who will fight for equal rights, even if it takes centuries.
3.) We are together.
Humankind has grown so large and interdependent we have formed something like a super-organism across the earth. We are so many parts of one planet, yet we keep being reminded of our separateness. We are no more separate than trees in the forest whose roots link for miles in all directions, or than a mountain range is separate from the valley.
Our resources come from each other, our lives rely on the web, and what seems like an insignificant fragment of support that we as one person can provide adds up by the billions to hold together our world as we know it.
Where some are wounded we all are wounded. Where some heal we all are healed.
Do what you can. Help the causes, sing your songs, do your work, rest your rest. We will hold you and you will help hold us.
No one is alone here.
We are together.