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The Smallest Steps

(NOTE: What’s happening in this country and in the world is beyond messed up. Real people are currently dying, are in danger or soon will be one or both of those things. The United States, the Middle East, Ukraine, Haiti, and so many other places are headed nowhere good. I am not a foreign policy expert, nor do I know how to dismantle, once and for all, the systems that have led us to this unraveling, violent place. I don’t pretend that any of what I suggest below is "the" answer, nor is it easy, but it is important, and it is possible, so maybe it will feel valuable to you. I hope it does.)


the author, seated on the sidewalk, cross-legged, writing the word "strength" upside down in different colors of chalk so it can be read by people in front of them

A dear friend texted me a few days ago. “How are you doing? Hoping you have a strong non-self care plan.” He makes me laugh. And I did laugh. It was the sort of conspiratorial laugh like when everyone is yelling at Thanksgiving and your cousin leans over and says three words that only mean anything to the two of you and those three words and their proximity to your ear distill the madness before your eyes into the ridiculousness that it is.

 

“What is a non-self care plan,” you might ask?

 

In short, it’s a plan to take an honest look at how much of what I’m feeling is about my stories about what “should” be, what I “deserve” and how “right” or “wrong” any of it is. It’s about a plan that does not put the construct of “me” at the center. It’s about knowing that my personal welfare is neither guaranteed by my focusing on it nor is it a loving use of my resources.

 

Community is not what will get us through. It’s why we’re here.

 

Like many ideas, the United States sort of sounded better in our heads or at least in the heads of the men who dreamed it up. I do love this country, and I hope it gets to keep trying. But maybe let’s quit trying for what the founders envisioned because that was some seriously zero sum, self-centered chicanery, if you ask me.

 

It is within our power to create relationships based on reciprocity, generosity, and healing. These communities emerge, if ever-so-briefly, every time something blows up or otherwise is suddenly and shockingly (or not-so-shockingly) destroyed. When our kids are gunned down at school or our towns are flattened by the sequalae of climate change, we see each other. Just for a breath. For a day. For a week. But we do it. Our ever-expanding hearts believe in the truth of our interconnection and use it to help us find our footing in a groundless world. It's possible. It’s natural. It’s our default, even!

 

And then, when the pressure lets up enough the fire in our desperate hearts slowly burns out and we come back. Not home, but back to the place where we need a good excuse to listen to the constant yearning to be with, to help, to love each other.

 

But listen, my sweet, broken, loving, gorgeous things. As we set out to find and foster community, it feels important to clarify something.

 

a black and white photos of a soldier on a non-descript battlefield. He has a rifle slung over his shoulder and is standing in profile holding up a helmet that has a large hole in it. He smiling a wry smile at the camera as he stands in profile.

The inhabitants of this planet long-ago reached critical mass of personal and collective trauma the healing of which will take global, collective effort yet unseen.


We have been murdering, bombing, conquering, enslaving, dehumanizing and otherwise destroying each other for thousands of years. We are the children of abuse, alcoholism, genocide, war, deportation, untreated mental illness. There’s not a human on this earth who is not marked by the deep, scarring imprint of generations of harm—whether their ancestors were the enslavers and abusers or the enslaved and abused-- every one of us is the victim of the brokenness that inspired those actions and allowed those realities.

 

We have spent enough time in the crucible of greed, conquest, and binary assessments of the world and each other. We must choose, every day, to harm so much less and so much less often. You and me. In our homes. In meetings. In our cars. Online.

 

When we start seeing each other, knowing each other and caring for each other, we will become strong. When we are strong like that and the "too wounded to love" come for “them,” “them” will be “us.” When we finally tire of deciding who is in and who is out and decide instead to simply show up for each other, we will hear the whispers of beloved community. We will feel it and continue to build it in the tiniest ways through consistent commitment to each other, beyond self.

 

Start small. We got here mostly with small, thoughtless steps. We'll get back through even smaller, thoughtful ones.


When you see trash on the ground in your neighborhood, take care of it. You’re not teaching anyone a lesson by leaving it there. It may have been an accident. Maybe it was left by a person who doesn't feel connected enough to their community to care about keeping it free of trash. Your picking it up doesn’t mean the world will stop littering. It’s a choice to do what you can do to help heal this part of the world.

 

a hand is gingerly picking up a discarded cup off the sidewalk using a napkin.

When someone “cuts you off,” let them. That person was not thinking about you. And that is very, very normal. Their not thinking about you was not an act against you or a sign of the decline of society. There's a decent chance that person was laboring under the delusion that there's not enough time or that their "self" is the most important "self." That's a hard place to be.

 

Wait. Everywhere. All the time. Get in the habit of making the space and time for others that happens when you just wait. Wait for the next elevator rather than cramming in as though this is the last elevator to wherever you’re headed. If the light is yellow, slow down and stop. If there is a bicyclist in the drive lane on your side of the road, drive behind them at a safe distance until it is safe to pass. When it’s safe to pass, just pass, at a normal rate of speed. They’re enjoying their life or maybe even working out some trauma. You can make space for that, can't you?  

 

Our fellow humans are not obstacles to our peace, they are integral to it. We’ll never learn or believe that if we keep honking at them, speeding past them, or swerving around them.

 

Here's the kicker.


You will not change the outcome of the election by doing any of this. These actions will not make the flurry of nonsensical cabinet appointments make more sense. They won't change your aunt's behavior this Thanksgiving. In fact, none of these actions are transactions with an “If I, then you” type of reward built in. They are examples of the steps you can take to continue to wake up from the illusion of separateness so relentlessly fueled by “self” and “me”-ness.

 

Try it. Maybe it will suck, and you’ll hate it, and, by extension, you’ll hate me, too. That would make me sad, but my feelings are not your responsibility, so there’s that.

 

I’m kooky enough to believe that what is more likely to happen is that you will enjoy greater peace. You will be reminded that we belong to each other and that, as Ruth King has said so many times, “Your heart and my heart are very old friends.”

 

You can magnify the harm or you can heal it. Your call.

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