Getting Through

A friend I don’t know on Facebook wrote:

“Is anybody else finding it exceedingly difficult to go about business as usual in the midst of this current reality? How do you do it?”

 And went on to express how her fears and hopes battled with each other each day in her mind. So I wrote back:

If anyone figures it out, do tell. Meanwhile, a few things have been useful for me:

• Keep doing what you do well and/or must do. From water the plants to feed the children to show up at work. Do it even better than usual, more mindfully, more engaged, more present.

• Feel daily life heightened and made more meaningful and serious by devoting a portion to social justice from what ever corner you stand in.

• Do things with others as much as possible. This is not the time to be alone with our thoughts, unless we’re under a tree in solitude and gaining strength from the quiet. Shift our life of extreme individuality and aloneness to collective and communal action and enjoyment.

• Share the fears to get some of the weight off our chests.

• Share the hopes while doing something— a phone call, letter, march, writing a poem, feeding the homeless. Intentional action charges our spirit.

• Fear is real, don’t deny it, but don’t give it the upper hand. It cripples us.

• Hope is real, but go beyond naïve wishing. Feel hope as the sense that this action, this thought, this conversation, is right and what the world needs now.

• Look the whole catastrophe in the face without blinking and saying, "Let's dance."

• Give your two cents in conversations like this and don’t think it’s not worth much. If 50 people do it, then we have a dollar!