3/29/2020 Finding bigger stories
I hope this Sunday finds you well, healthy, and committed to staying home as much as possible. The last few weeks have brought a rapid and drastic change in our routines. Unsettling, destabilizing, even frightening - and yet, even so, full of the seeds of hope.
I write from the privileged position of having a safe, comfortable home, steady employment, and a relatively less-impacted community. When I become overwhelmed with worry, I try to remind myself that I am in a position to help. When the news about a shortage of protective equipment for our care providers, a shortage of ventilators to treat patients, a huge slush fund for billionaires tucked into the latest federal relief package, and the criminal lack of consistent, factual information from this administration triggers a sense of fury, I try to remind myself that I am in a position to act, to influence, to give voice to the issues, and of course, to vote.
This seems such an important time to find these "bigger" stories. Fear can shrink our worlds and oversimplify our stories. The bigger stories connect our present to our past, and remind us that there is always, always, the possibility of surprise. And these stories remind us, most importantly, that we are agents of that surprise. Agents of change.
I'll share two quotes I encountered this past week that give some delightful food for thought:
Erich Fromm, The Revolution of Hope (1968)
Only through full awareness of the danger to life can this potential be mobilized for action capable of bringing about drastic changes in our way of organizing society… One cannot think in terms of percentages or probabilities as long as there is a real possibility — even a slight one — that life will prevail.
Rebecca Solnit, "On Being" (interview)
If you study history deeply, you realize that, to quote Patti Smith, “people have the power,” that popular power, civil society, has been tremendously powerful and has changed the world again and again and again. That we’re not powerless. That things are very unpredictable and that people have often taken on things that seemed hopeless — freeing the slaves, getting women the vote — and achieved those things.
Sent with love and gratitude to you all, and best wishes for robust health -
Liz