Offense and Defense

Below is the hopeful blog I wrote before the election and looked forward with glee to posting it. Now it’s all turned to shit and I’m still reeling from the blow. There are a thousand reasons to just quit the game, take my ball and go home and try to stop caring about it all. But knowing that they win if we all give up, I guess I’ll just keep posting my tiny whispers into a roaring wind blowing the other way. Read this and weep. (And remember that the last paragraph was written in the certainty that Kamala would win.)

 

Life, like basketball and other sports, requires that the players learn to play offense and defense. Life, like sports, is generally more fun when one has the ball dribbling down the court or running down the field or standing up at bat, using the whole of your skillset to make the basket, score the goal, hit the ball. 

Defense is, of course, necessary, but it’s less fun to put all your energy into stopping the other team. Especially in life. It’s exhausting to always be reacting to the next horrific move, especially the ones that the refs aren’t seeing or are seeing and aren’t calling. 

 

I have sometimes been called too negative or cynical because I’ve spent so much time thinking about, writing about, speaking out about what’s wrong in the world. And I stand by that. Imagine never playing defense in any of the above games! You would get trampled! By naming what’s toxic, you take your first step to the tonic. By diagnosing the cancer, you can begin the steps needed for healing. By calling out injustice, you can start to move the moral arc needle closer to justice. 

 

People can—and have—spent their lifetimes making such critiques and I believe that has helped keep the universe in balance. But it is true that such constant naming of everything that isn’t working is both exhausting to the whistleblower and can be dispiriting and debilitating to the people who need to hear it. So it’s a good idea to balance what’s wrong with what’s right and to show it not only in words, but in the very way you live your life and love your live and live your love.

 

My half a century teaching music to kids and folks of all ages has been precisely the antidote I’m calling for, exactly the change I want to see in the world. Showing in the micro-climate what I hope for in the macro. Still, I feel called upon to show how what does work is often thwarted by the toxic systems that pave over the ground where it can best bloom and create the conditions whereby good-hearted people do bad things. Defense will always be part of the game.

 

But the thought of living through another 4-years in a constant reactive and defensive posture, using all my energy to figure out how to survive it and keep it from beating me down, feeling even the joyful moments diminished because they happen against a backdrop of hatred, lies, greed, deceit— well, I couldn’t figure out how I could go through all of that again.

 

But now we have the ball again! I’m ready to move downcourt and work generously and joyfully with my teammates and hug the opposing team knowing we’re all in the game together. There are no words to express how much I—we all— needed this. It’s not a mean-spirited gloating that we won this game. In fact, the opposite. Knowing what would have happened if we lost, where the very rules of the game and its pleasure would have been trashed beyond any foreseeable redemption, here is the chance to get to work. 

With our spirits restored and hope, not fear, nudging us to step up to the hard work and also take time to enjoy it.