If the events of the past weeks and months have shown me anything, it’s the tension of balancing many different, and at times conflicting, emotions all at once.
How do I grieve for a group of people who is enduring a type of pain I can never fully understand, and what to do about that pain?
How do I offer a compassion apart from a knowledge of suffering, and feel for them without becoming numb or fatigued?
What sorts of actions can I undertake when I don't have (or feel like I don’t have) the direct ability to change anything?
How does this affect how I am living and the people around me? How does this issue relate to my surrounding community, culture, and country?
It's the unfortunate and complicated paradox of life.
But even in the midst of this inner strife, I’ve find some oddly striking feelings. When I pull the pieces apart, I find gratitude. Humility. Determination and resolve.
***
Gratitude. You become grateful for how much you do have. And for most of us living in America, that's a lot more than the rest of the world. Freedoms, privileges, opportunities. Warm meals, a hot shower, a bed to lay our heads in at night.
Much of the world does not have the “luxury” to concern themselves with foreign policies and world affairs. They're busy trying to find clean water and hunting morsels of food to stay alive. Some are working 16 hour shifts, 7 days a week to stay afloat. This place you live in might not be perfect, but a look around the world and it's obvious it could be much, much worse.
Humility. You're humbled by the fact that life is not about you. You're not the center of the universe, not the main lead in the film—and somehow, that's comforting. Kingdoms will rise and fall with or without you. The planets will make their daily revolutions, whether you want them to or not.
It's like walking up to the mountaintop and seeing everything around you. You lose yourself in the grandeur of something else. But rather than feel crushed by its magnitude, you are inspired to contribute something meaningful.
Determination. You find a resolve to make a difference in the only way you can. You do this by painting and making sculptures. By writing to understand yourself. By arguing for thoughts and ideas (even if they're uncomfortable or opposed to your beliefs). By playing a sport. By fixing a meal and hosting a stranger over for dinner. By working your job to support the people you care about. By volunteering your time to a cause. By lending yourself to a friend who needs you. By caring for your baby in the middle of the night.
And perhaps, some things will begin to change. You might produce an action that is noteworthy and felt by many—it might even make the news. Mostly, it'll be the incremental and small action that you impact and receive, which will go mostly unnoticed by the world, that contributes to a big change.
***
So much of what’s going on in the world is bewildering.
It’s hard to balance full-scale terror and pandemics with the daily humdrum of life. Some might even say it’s an absurdity of life, and conclude there is no purpose in continuing on.
But like a symphony, we all have different notes to play, and we only play what we’re assigned. What we have to trust is that it’ll inevitably make sense in the final tally, when the composer makes it all come together in the end.
This is the quiet resolve to live the life that only you can live, and that you are meant to Iive.
It’s the only thing we can do.