What now?
What we do now is the only thing we can control, and it matters so much. Choose your contribution to the present moment as wisely as you can.
This time - late summer, looking ahead to autumn with profound uncertainty - seems like a rewind. Scary pandemic news, political strife, international and global crises. Isn’t this where we were last year?
And if so, what now?
In the past week, my close circle lost a very dear friend, the matriarch of a clan that served as a second family to many of my peers as we all grew up - while raising six children of her own. My community lost another individual, an amazing artist who used light-refracting media in new ways, and was famous for sending the most beautiful holiday cards to his circle of friends.
These two losses (not Covid-related, as far as I know) are personal, and they occurred in a week which echoed their deaths with far too many others, all across the country, in Afghanistan, and around the world. At times the amount of loss seems as overwhelming as it did last winter.
What now?
We have safe and effective vaccines that will protect the vast majority of folk from the worst impacts of Covid 19. We know that wearing facial coverings and maintaining distance will go a long way to protect the rest. We have built activist structures over the last four and a half years that are still in place, ready to exert positive pressure on elected officials to tell the truth, protect the right to vote, eliminate gerrymandering and dark money, and stand up for public health.
Yesterday, thousands of folk across the country gathered to march to advocate for voting rights, on the 58th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Their goal: to protect the voting rights that are the legacy of the Civil Rights movement; to prevent voting rights from further contracting and distortion; and to remind us that we have the obligation to work as hard on behalf of democracy at home and abroad as those who came before us.
My dear friends: “what now” is the same as always. We humanize everyone, step lightly on the earth, offer compassionate understanding to all. We refuse to demonize our fellow humans. We have no time for false narratives about blame; we insist on true accountability. We take all the actions we can to care for ourselves and others.
The energy we spend on righteous indignation regarding how we got here can be better used. We are here, after all, and all the righteous indignation in the world will not change that.
We grieve the losses, we experience the anger, we forgive our past mistakes, we recognize our own contributions to the present moment, and we choose our next right action.
What we do now is the only thing we can control, and it matters so much. Choose your contribution to the present moment as wisely as you can, and then - what next?
Choose again. And again. And again.
For Peggy and Don.
Below: “Saturnalia - 2016” (image of art by Don O’Conner; photo by Liz Fountain)