Originally written January 2023
It feels to me like the calendar year changed later this time around. As if U.S. society was not “fully operational” until mid-to-late January. I’m trying to take inspiration from this, to believe that people are - by intention or necessity - resisting the oppressive architecture of our world. Daily I remind myself that the current reality isn’t our destiny as humans. As Ursula K. Le Guin famously said, “We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable, but then so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.”
As my heart and mind careens from violent act to violent act across the world, the doomsday clock is ticking and all I hear is unhealed pain. I am trying to remind myself that though this time feels more urgent and terrible than ever before, perhaps it is also the most beautiful and possible than ever before. How easy it is to be afraid as humans, how easy it is for that fear to drive us.
I’m trying to take in the relentless headlines by imagining I am someone else, someone angry with and afraid of change and Black and Brown people and expansive gender and abortion, someone who is activated by the word “white” especially with the word “men” after it. Whether it’s my own internalized oppression, an exercise in true compassion, or both, I try to put myself in those shoes for as long as I can. I have been thinking often of ALOK’s words, "What feminine part of yourself did you have to kill in order to survive in the world?” and “You can’t change people by making them feel ashamed or discredited. You change them by loving them more than they hate you.”