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When I started my PhD, I wanted to study everything. Seriously – my topic was hope in global history, no small thing, and I did not want to narrow that down! My advisor took me out to lunch and explained to me that the way history works as a discipline is that historians are building a house of stones together, with each person bringing a stone. My job was to focus on finding my stone, and I could trust that others would find theirs. We would build the house together by each doing our own small part.
There are other, similar analogies in academia. Stay in your lane. Plough your own furrow. But I don’t like either of them as much as the building a house analogy. Staying in your lane, ploughing your own furrow, you are just doing you – your focus is individualistic and often careerist. Building a house, however, is a cooperative effort. You do your bit, with faith that others are doing theirs. The enterprise is joint.
When a problem seems insurmountable — like right now, when there are so many metastisizing problems all snowballing at once — I find it helps to think like an historian, or any kind of scholar or scientist: don’t try to understand it all, don’t try to take on every bit of it at once. Choose one part. Find others who have also chosen that part. Focus on that. Trust that building the house will be a cooperative effort. You will do more good that way, and you will also feel better. It is easier to allow that there is more than you can handle that needs addressing when you are grounded in what you are addressing.
In meditation practice, we talk about having an anchor. In the way meditation is typically taught, this is usually the breath: there is the instruction to keep returning to the breath. But the breath is only one of many possible anchors. Your anchor could be the sensation of your hands against your thighs, or the sounds you can hear, or the content of the thoughts that bubble up in your head like water from a fountain, or the way each one of those thoughts feels in your body. When you meditate, you wander. It doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong. It’s just how meditation works. You wander and you return.
So when you are wandering in the wilderness of inhumanity and injustice and fear, return to the base camp of what you can do, and who you can do it with.
And, as I’ve said before and will continue to reiterate, you are allowed to leave the wilderness, go to town, take a shower, resupply, have an ice cream or a nice cold beer. If this is a possibility for you, take it. The people and places that need your support and your action — the ones for whom this is not a possibility — want you rested and able, not fatigued and floundering. They really do.
Reflections from my trip to the US
Last week I promised some reflections from my trip to Arizona and New Mexico, where I spent the two weeks before Easter, so for those interested I’ll share them here.
What’s it like in the US right now? Honestly, I think that really depends.
For me, a white, English-speaking, American citizen who lives abroad and was there on holiday, it was more surreal than anything else. The cognitive dissonance was massive. Each morning I would read about the latest indignities and injustices, and then I would go out in beautiful country and interact with friendly, warm people. There were all the usual, easy kindnesses across class, culture and race with fellow hikers, restaurant workers, sales clerks, campground hosts, etc. Two women complimented my earrings as they walked past me on the trail. A gallery owner gifted my kids 3000 year old Indian arrowheads. The owner of the horses we rode gently placed his hand under my daughter’s to teach her how to feed baby carrots to her ride. The tension I felt while reading the news about the US stood in stark contrast to the ease I felt actually moving around the US.
For me, with my privileges and distance, it’s almost like there were two different countries co-existing; the one I knew was happening that I couldn’t see, and the one I actually experienced each day. It reminded me a lot of how Americans live with the fact of gun violence: you know it happens, but if it doesn’t affect you directly, it’s easy to continue as if it doesn’t happen. And even if it does affect you directly, life seems to continue as usual all around you. The US is a really, really big place. Echoes die out. Ripples from stones tossed in the water don’t go far.
On the Saturday I was there, my kids and I went with my mother to a protest in Tucson. We arrived at 8:30 and by 9 o’clock there were about 1100 of us lining an intersection by a Tesla dealership with our signs. It was hot and the crowd was placid. The time passed very quickly – we waved at the many vehicles who honked in support and we shook our signs at the few who let us know they disagreed. When 10 o’clock came, we all went home. I was happy to be part of the resistance, and I was sad that it felt so futile. I know that it’s not futile! Tesla profits dropped 71% in the last quarter; politicians are slowly responding to the anger and discontent that is not going away; colleges and universities are growing spines. But the pace of change is slow, and a protest is not a magic wand.
In the UK, I had felt powerless because I was too far away to join protests. In the US, I felt powerless because I felt like our display was just so meagre — I wanted more. But I know that perception is not reality, and while I may have felt powerless, the words my mom had written on her sign are right: The power of the people is stronger than the people in power. This has been proven true many times over, across the centuries, around the world. El pueblo unido jamás será vencido is a chant I’ve often heard and taught. The people, united, will never be defeated. My favourite sign at the protest, and it was hard to choose just one, was a big black flag that said “We the people,” written in the script of the Declaration of Independence, “are pissed off!”
There is no doubt that the US is teetering on the edge of an authoritarian abyss. But it is still on the edge. It has not fallen yet, and there are many reasons to believe it won’t. After my visit, I believe that the center of gravity is still there, rooted in democracy and a vision of decency and equality that has not been lost, and in fact may be getting stronger with each day. As ever in the US, it is a question of competing visions for the country and whose voice is louder. We must keep speaking up.
Postcard from my garden
