Grief, anger, and false divisions
We are not a line but a constellation, not a division but a messy, beautiful community.
Dearest friends: Winter hangs on here in our valley, and we try valiantly to recall that spring is on the way.
“I feel like there’s so much more anger out there,” a teaching colleague of mine said as we chatted, masked and distanced, in the hallway of our academic building on campus. “More than I ever recall before.”
I’ve been thinking about this, and the link between anger and grief, especially unprocessed grief. And I think many, if not most, of our leaders on all “sides” are profoundly misreading (if not misleading us about) the emotional state of our American community.
I hear statements like “Americans are more divided than ever” and I flinch. Because, if you follow the data, we are not all that divided on most issues. Or maybe a better description is to say the division is sometimes dramatic but it does not split us 50/50. I also hear a lot of fluttering about wings, left and right, and descriptions of resisters of those wings as “centrists” or “moderates.” But all this terminology does is obfuscate the real experience of our communities: accessible child and elder care, safe and effective schools, good health care, sound infrastructure, public safety, clean air and water, good food - these are universal needs and values.
We are not, fundamentally, on a linear continuum from “left” to “right” with “reasonable” people in the “middle.” That is an artificial construct, and it hurts our ability to connect and understand one another. It promotes the power of leaders - people and parties - who use that construct to teach us to fear the ideas and actions of those who stand farther away from us. “Those people” become a threat, and soon enough the language turns them non-human.
We are taught to blame “them” for our grief, for our pain, for our loss. Seeking relief, we are susceptible to believing “they” caused our suffering, or at least, “they” are in the way of removing it. Anger takes over the space of our grief and, for a moment, feels better: anger brings energy, where grief is draining, exhausting.
There is plenty to be angry about, of course. Too many people have profited from this time of grief, too many people have turned their energies to exploiting our sorrows, too many people have turned their resources to shutting ordinary folk out of the democratic decision-making process. Too many people in authority continue to abuse that status, and too many of our friends and neighbors and fellow humans are living in deprivation because of it.
As long as we let those in power determine where we aim our righteous outrage, however, we will not heal. If we fall for the stories of division and left/right extremism, of a mythical center, of dehumanization and fear, we will remain stuck in grief and anger.
We have lost so many family, friends, neighbors, in this dreadful pandemic. We have lost lives, time with loved ones, jobs, businesses, dreams. Acknowledging loss requires vulnerability. It requires us to recognize, deeply, profoundly, that we are not all standing on a line with polarized extremes at either end. That is a story we are told, but it is a lie.
We are all standing in this same moment, in this now, together and separate, complex and simple, yearning for safety, bearing the weight of our sorrows, anxious for relief, fighting despair, angry and hopeful, certain and afraid, all the full realness of this human experience.
We are not a line but a constellation, not a division but a messy, beautiful community, parts of a greater whole, every one of us both at the center and at the periphery, one branch of the family of creatures on this planet we call home.
Be safe and well, and know that you are never alone on your journey.