Where to put your energy when everything sucks

Me vs. late 2021

Everything is terrible, but there’s hope in it.

Let’s unpack that a bit.

Start with the stipulation that the worst part of this global pandemic is the death, disease, economic hardship, and societal separation that accompanies it.

Before we go further, let’s take a moment to reckon with the phrase “the worst part of this global pandemic.” You can’t pick the worst part of the pandemic anymore than you can pick a favorite kidney stone.

But also how is that a phrase in our contemporary life? “The worst part of this global pandemic.” These words should be a description of pre-modernity or the setting of a post-apocalyptic, science fiction novel. Not, you know, now.

(Since we have self-driving cars, robot vacuums, video calls, and holograms, it has occurred to me that we are in a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel. Or, at the very least, a shitty version of The Jetsons.)

For us, the backdrop of this nov…er, pandemic is inequity. It’s built into our country’s founding as a feature, not a bug. To borrow another metaphor from the world of technology, we are still trying to patch the original code rather than rewrite it completely. Pick any common system — health care, education, housing, democracy, etc. — and each was made worse when a set of novel spike proteins arrived.

COVID-19 was the fertilizer that spread inequities throughout our societal garden. Instead of flowers, we got weeds. The old weeds multiplied while new ones pushed up through the dirt.

Running parallel to this pandemic was the other one: the ugly, messy, decades-long reckoning with what we reap and sow at the intersection of race, history, and public policy. A few flowers continue to bloom there, but because we now do everything faster than before, the accompanying herbicide rained down sooner than expected.

So we stipulate all of this — *waves hands in the direction of domestic policy* — is the worst.

Now to address the terrible banality of our daily existence.

(The hope part comes later, I promise.)

The Multiverse of Sadness: a listicle

What an era we are living in! An era of boiling, impotent rage from within the unending doom of the world’s worst group project.

Like most group projects, you do not get an “A” if a couple of people don’t complete their part of the assignment. At best, you’re getting a “C.” (If Steve had just finished the goddamn poster, it would have been a “B,” but Steve sucks.

To avoid belaboring the obvious, here’s where we are now, lightning-round style:

• It’s more than likely you’re going to get COVID because even the people who “did everything right” are getting it.
• “Get COVID” is now a range of outcomes from “might end up in a hospital” to “might have a cold for a few days.”
• Somehow this range of outcomes means it’s easier to make decisions than when “get COVID” meant “definitely end up in a hospital and might die.”
• It does not actually feel easier to make decisions.
• The disease does not care if you “did everything right.”
• We’re actually supposed to get to a point when “get COVID” is not a bigger deal than “get the flu” but it doesn’t seem like we’re there yet, but also it does?
• What it feels like to “get the flu in 2021” is what people who “got the flu in 1918” were probably hoping for.
• “Long COVID” is still a fear but less if you get it post-vaccine? Maybe? TBD, I guess?
• We’re still trying to be “careful” but have no idea what that means anymore.
• Never leaving your house was the easy answer to what “careful” was but we don’t have easy answers anymore.
• Schools and workplaces are crumbling under the weight of all this.
• It’s tempting to seek solace in anger at a boss or school administrator for not doing enough but every better choice they could make requires immediate resources that aren’t there or results in other downsides that might be just as bad.
• Most people in charge are experiencing the same lack of physical and mental wherewithal everyone else is.
• It’s harder to ignore the fact that there are no real answers because as much as science has come through big time in the last couple years, the first draft of this history is still being written and we’re also in a state of constant revision.
• The idea of community is much smaller than it ever was.
• Our values are not defined by our geography in the way we like to think.
• Hate does have a home here.
• Also having a home here are lawn signs that say “unmask the kids” for reasons I will never understand.
• Somehow there are people who are bolder than ever about their disinterest in others. You can tell who they are because they’re the ones not wearing masks in church when asked to, which honestly is the most galling fucking thing in a building where people literally line up together to take something called communion.
• Asking nicely and pleading and sticking to the facts hasn’t helped either.
• Everyone has a different risk profile based on their health, the age of those around them, whether they have kids, what their job is, their mental health, etc. This makes the group project harder.
• Occasional public shaming toward others who aren’t acting according to the same risk profile you have gives you a modicum of brief relief then feels like shit.
• The CDC just said you can run with scissors as long as it’s just between the living room and the kitchen.
• Misinformation and context collapse is still a thing.
• Some of the folks we elected to fix all this are still working from an old playbook.
• The playbook got us here.
• The playbook is bad.

I’m not sure if that list is complete but that covers a lot of it. None of this is factually bulletproof or supported by peer-reviewed research. It is, as the kids on the Internet say, what is giving us all the feels. It’s an anecdotal mish-mash of reading too many tweets, headlines, and posts and retweeting those feelings after saying no to the question “would you like to read the article first?”

Naming things makes them less scary.

Here’s the point where I offer you some hope.

A union of work in progress

First, I regret to inform you that within the suffering lies the hope. As a friend reminded me today, via the words of Mariame Kaba, hope is a discipline.

If I may take this further, it is a discipline of mistakes and failure that creates truth and growth.

Two days ago, in the early conception of this piece, offering some hope felt like a dodge. Better to feel the full weight of the terrible as a form of exposure therapy. Together we shall build up an immunity to iocane powder. When the time comes for a battle of wits with a Sicilian? When death is on the line? We will emerge victorious!

But suffering is not the end goal. It’s the emergence from suffering with your soul intact. It’s not the poison, it’s the story that resumes after the poisoning.

None of this should be read as an endorsement of harm or abuse. Protect your heart and your health from those who seek to be deliberate in creating injury or mistreatment. Break the cycle. Unsubscribe from the updates. Just let that person be wrong on the Internet and log the fuck off.

We will get through this, but only after occasionally doing the hard things. Yelling and being yelled at aren’t the real fight in a long game. You are not your thoughts or what you consume. You are your thoughts turned into action. The greatest you is what you do in service to others.

If we want a better world, we have to continue to want it and work for it. We have to step into the fire knowing we will walk out with burns. The burns may be new for some of us, but let’s remember that others have seen their burns blistered, broken open, and healed again several times over. For too long, we have let them endure alone.

Here’s where I try, in my clearest moments, to place my focus right now. Here is where I look for a set of communal values that will win out over calcified self-interest.

In the choices we make, we have to understand that inclusion doesn’t mean making space for those who already have power.

Why are we prioritizing the needs of people who don’t believe in community over those who truly want to be a part of it? Why are we so quick to worry about those who say “Well I’ll just leave then” over those who are here to stay, especially those who have no choice?

The comfort of an incomplete version of history and all its broken systems creates a caste of bunkers formed to protect a self-image. It’s what leads to the desecration of a flag that represents liberty and justice for all and causes some to fly the flag of a serpent or one with colors that represent violence and vigilantism instead of the peace, honesty, and valor that represents the best of us.

Instead of slicing ourselves into thinner and thinner pieces, we must rededicate ourselves to the more perfect union that remains a work in progress. We must make space for those who are so often left out, for those who are only asking for their needs to be seen as equally valid in a world where some are ushered to the front of the line before it even forms.

We have to continue to want things to be better and take steps to make it so.

Hope begets justice only when fed by wisdom and resolve.

In 2022, my wish for you is a listicle of all that.

This piece has been living rent-free in my head for at least two days or maybe six months. If you are grappling with the arrival of Season 3 of The Pandemic, then I hope this helps you. If it does, share it with someone else who is, too.