So many conversations recently about how to enjoy what we can, even as the world continues its tumult. How we might laugh anyway, or rest anyway. I find myself looking for moments that engender a smile: an image of a dog and a child on a summer day, a stranger purchasing coffee for my mom as a surprise act of care, deer trudging at 5am across our lawn, (my new oh-so-fun wake-up time) drawing their single-line track through nearly 2 feet of snow. We are seeking, as writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin once wrote, a way to illuminate the inner darkness and hurt we are all feeling with light, so that we may find a way to “make the world a more human dwelling place.”
And by a more human dwelling place, I do believe he was implying a more humane dwelling place.
We do know how to do this – we do know how to create goodness. During the depression we helped each other get through by organizing family garden plots, and pot-luck dinners. During the pandemic, we offered music from our balconies, held drive-by birthday celebrations in our neighborhoods, and built pod groups of friendship, agreeing to keep an eye on each other and play together with safety. And how many of us were moved by the site of athletes across national divides helping each up, hugging each other, and cheering each other on during the Olympics.
We know what it means to create space between the assaults of violence and greed where we can feel bonded and aided and loved.
And we know what it’s like to help each other smile. It is so simple. A warm glance, a welcoming gaze, and every now and then a celebration. A high five, a “let’s build a mural together,” or a “come over and have some food and tell me all about it,” moment. Empathy, daily choices of care, joy in each other’s growth and small triumphs – it truly doesn’t take much to shift the drudgery of this time toward warmth and uplift.
Let us look back at this time and say, “During the dark, dank days of the chaotic era, we built fires together, we walked and held hands, we fed each other, and we watched the water move by with our friends and our furry ones, ever reminding us of the possibility of a cleansing flow and a new moment arriving.”
Love, Maria
