Catching Some Consolation
Twitter is yelling today. So is the News. Everyone has opinions on how I should be spending my attention / energy / money to help with various crises. The crises are real. People are hurting and afraid, which makes them highly reactive and less able to feel empathy for approaches which are different than theirs. These crises have been brewing for years, a fact which has some yelling “I’ve been trying to warn you, why didn’t you listen?” But the past few days have had tipping points where everything went from “brewing” to “boiling over”. Now everything is hissing, smoking, making a mess, and we have literal fires to put out. And yet for someone like me who isn’t standing in the kitchen, who is out of reach to control the pot, the ways I can help are limited. My work is mostly unchanged. I still have to do laundry today even though missiles are flying over cities. I still need to write my representatives, precisely because other states have passed bad laws. I need to spend time writing, even though it feels like words are inadequate. I must tend to people near to me, because the mundane ways that we lift each other up don’t go away just because the crises boiled over. Today I’ve just added a new task called “Do not let the shouting and anxiety consume me.” When I was picking a title for this post I started with the word “comfort” but I don’t think I should be comfortable with world events today. However I do think I can be consoled. Consolation acknowledges the grief and allows it to continue to exist even while moving forward to do what is necessary.
I gathered the following two quotes from twitter. They helped me find some consolation today. Perhaps they’ll also help you.
With the world locked into a spiral of destruction, what point is there in making art? How can a song or a story or a picture make a difference? But every act of creation is also an act of defiance. And something as small as a butterfly’s wing can sometimes summon the hurricane. –Joanne Harris From @joannechocolat on Twitter.
It can be overwhelming to witness/experience/take in all the injustices of the moment; the good news is that *they’re all connected.* So if your little corner of work involves pulling at one of the threads, you’re helping to unravel the whole damn cloth. Let’s keep working our corners. Solidarity. –Ursula Wolfe-Rocca From @LadyOfSardines on Twitter