What do we do now?
Coming to terms when you've lost something dear
The first day is hard, the second, unexpectedly, harder. It’s the coming to terms when you’ve lost something dear, when reality seeps in, and down, and the dark stain finds its way even onto the secret slivers of light you’ve sequestered somewhere.
I stare at a blank page, hoping something sensible will find its way into words. The cursor blinks.
In the void, blame comes too easily. If I pinpoint a cause for my distress, can I make it stop? There are plenty of available targets, and I want to fling my fear-fueled anger onto them, bury them with my disillusionment until they choke.
And yet, everything about my inclination to take sides goes against a stronger instinct to look for common ground. When I replace nameless, faceless people with those whose stories I have the privilege to know, or with whom I share the briefest of smiles, everything softens. Hostility loses power. Hope brightens.
This is what I have to come back to. This is what I have to do, again.
Someone bemoans the cost of medication, points to a president, to a pair of presidents. I say I think the price of prescriptions is way bigger than any administration, and the person agrees, backing off their soap box.
Someone expresses concern for the growing strength of other countries and wonders who will prove a better leader if another global war erupts. We talk about motives, ethics, and the danger of trusting social media. We don’t agree with each other, but our conversation is civil.
Someone in class whose name I don’t know hands me cash after I announce a collection for the food pantry. Just like that. Just hands money over to me, no questions asked.
Someone in Walmart, walking the length of the aisle where I’m looking for peanut butter in glass jars, wishes every person well. At the far end, a worker stocking shelves strikes up conversation.
Someone delivers soup. Someone turns off the news. Someone searches for a lost elder who has wandered away from home. Someone works endless hours in a volunteer relief center. Someone makes amends. Someone stops to listen. Really listen. Someone hears. Someone goes on singing.
I struggle to put my faith in systems that have consistently elevated power and greed at the expense of everything else. But I trust the feeling that emerges when I stop fretting for enough minutes in a row to attend to my heart. Somehow, it says, we will find our way. Our children and their children will find their way. Somehow it will have to be enough to go on caring for each other, carrying each other, through it all.
This is what we do now. And when we can, we do more.
~Elizabeth
As part of the Chicken Scratch community, you matter. As part of the places where you interact, you matter. Your choices matters. Your voice matters. I hope you’ll feel able to share some of what’s on your mind here, today. I hope you’ll consider supporting the future of hope in whatever ways you can.
Such an excellent post Elizabeth and so timely - for all of us, I think. I really needed to hear (again) what I already know, which is that small things matter so much and that it's okay to feel wobbly right now. I was in the grocery store yesterday and I could feel the grief and sadness coming off people like steam. You write so well on a tricky topic - thank you.
P.S. I will be re-reading this a few times!
"Someone goes on singing." You and I and all of us who write. I've been listening a lot to Leonard Cohen's "You Got Me Singing." Here it is, singers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwcJQIyNZQM