It’s okay if you feel an overwhelming sense that you have nothing to offer the collective right now. This is what I keep telling myself.
It’s okay if you are not productive. At all.
Or if you are only capable of forcing yourself to be productive in ways that feel very mundane and ordinary (I think the most sustainable magic is built from the mundane bits) : clean your sneakers, make a pot of coffee, drink water, clean your cloth masks, hang them to dry, stretch at least a couple days a week, say a few nice things to yourself, mutter a simple gratitude list to yourself before you get out of bed in the morning, brush your teeth, lotion your face in all the parts where the constant heat of your own breath under the mask creates semi-permanent dry patches, call your dad, feel your heart beat.
This time is hard.
I have hesitated to write again, because I knew that whatever I wrote would stand in heavy contrast to the ebullient optimism of my last post from so many months earlier in the pandemic. I couldn’t bear to lead us further into the darkness. So I waited until the darkest, longest night of this year’s solar cycle had past. I hoped that with the slow and steady increase of daylight that I would feel a sudden and sustained resurge of vitality and hope. I am sensing glimmering, fleeting rushes of something that feels like hope and vitality, but also resilience still feels slippery and elusive.
The conclusion that I return to over and over again is that it is okay to be having a hard time. It is acceptable to struggle with finding a way back to an easy relationship with resilience. Perhaps that ease with resilience which some of us had previously known was partly, or fully, an illusion. Accepting that idea as possible fact is heartbreaking, because I want each of us to live lives of easy resilience.
And also, I have learned from previous moments of heartbreak, that heart breaks are also an opening. It is just a question of whether we are aware enough to sense both the breaking and the opening. I think it is helpful for me to remind myself and others that there is no denying that while a vaccine is now in selective and paced distribution, hope still feels far away for so very many of us. I also accept that hope is often bolstered by privilege; for some, resilience has always been far easier than it has ever been for a large number of folks. Systemic racism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, other-ism, hatred, fear.
This breaking has created an opening to a new way of seeing, feeling, and behaving. More of us have been forced to take a closer look at the places that light does not touch. It is not so easy to reconcile that our resilience may come at the cost of an other’s continued unease and oppression. Will interest in supporting new systems of care be sustained once Covid restrictions have been lifted? Or will many of us lose interest? For many folks that have always lived a marginalized identity, there is no choice in this matter. I find the breaking more easy to experience if I can imagine the majority of the collective being carried on a current that tends to the opening. But will we? Or perhaps a better question is how can we build a resilience that considers a collective resilience?
Dis-ease and disease. It’s hard to find a way to sit still between those two things, and focus. How can I sustain focus on one aspect of this opening? How can each of us focus on it in our own way? How can we learn new ways to focus when it is so difficult just to sit still long enough to open a book, to read a book, to finish reading a book. I think we are being asked to learn a new-super-power-level of focus and resilience.
Breaking. Opening. Breaking to open. Opening to break again. Keep breaking and opening. It is okay if the opening is small as a pin prick. The opening has to start somewhere. Focus on the opening, tend to the opening, and know that other heartbreaks will come. We are learning new ways to break open.