How to face the news and thrive

You know how people say, “If I’d lived in Nazi Germany, I would have...”?

No, you wouldn’t have. You know why? ’Cause you’re not doing it now, and it’s happening now, and it’s always been happening. That’s the paradox, and it’s the organizing principle of life.

Messed-up things are happening all the time, and you can’t be involved in all of them if you’re trying to carry on with your life as normal.

Last week I went to a conference. I wore my cute little new outfit, hung out with some friends, and had lunch with a girlfriend. I can pretend that life goes on as normal, and for many, many of us who are incredibly privileged, that’s true. What’s also true is that we’re living in a fascist state that’s terrorizing everybody who lives in this country.

Yes, that’s citizens, and it’s also non-citizens. Who gives a f*ck if you’re a citizen or not? You’re a human being deserving of basic rights. Last week an ICE agent shot a man in New York with a five-year-old in the car. FIVE YEAR OLD. ICE is all over the country terrorizing people, kidnapping people, and doing illegal things that should not be happening anywhere, let alone in the US of A.

And yet some of us can think, “Well, but is it really that bad? I can go to work, and nobody is coming after me.” Or, “It doesn’t look so bad, because business as usual keeps happening.” That has always been the case, people. Humans were doing horrendous things to other humans twenty years ago, thirty years ago, forty years ago, all the way back to the dawn of time. Whether it’s worse or better than at other times was never the discussion, because it’s always happening, and only the intensity changes.

Sometimes life will come for you, and you will be the one getting kidnapped by ICE, or you will be the one who lost their home in the fire, or you will be the one who got robbed at gunpoint, or you will be the one with a horrible disease. It can happen to anybody and everybody. And when it’s happening to you, a lot of other people in the world are perfectly fine and can carry on as normal without being touched by your personal tragedy. That’s just a fact of life.

It’s also a fact of life that we take turns. We’re not all suffering at the same time, thank f*ck. So when we’re in a position to help another human, we need to do it, because by the time it seems bad enough to be worth taking action, it’s probably going to be too late. Case in point, climate change. Whoopsies, we broke it, and we’ll see how we go.

So this is my invitation to do the right thing for yourself. I’m not asking you to take on saving the entire planet, because that’s ridiculous and you can’t, but take on something. Take on acknowledging that right now, in the US of A, we’re living under a very freaking oppressive regime that is destroying people’s lives, and that there’s something all of us can do about it.

Some of us can put our physical bodies between more vulnerable people and ICE, and some of us can go vote. I know the system’s broken, yada yada, but it’s better than nothing, and we do anything and everything we can until we can do more. We can support somebody who’s looking for a job by offering an introduction, looking over her resume, or taking her to lunch. Whatever it is.

Things can be wonderful at any given moment, and things can be horrendous at any given moment for so many of us. Your job as a human walking a spiritual path is to be as aware of all of it as you possibly can. So don’t let the bastards wear you down. Keep your joy and your desire to live fully, find a way to thrive, and acknowledge that everything’s on fire, that we’re destroying each other for no good reason, and that there is something you can do about it, even if it’s a small little thing.

You don’t get to be a spectator in life, because we’re all in it together and we’re all participants. It’s a freaking team sport, this ride.

Go do your part.

Courage, truth, and infinite love,