We've been back to work for a few days. I've already screwed up a few serious things. Disappointed folks. Let myself down. Felt out of it.
Today a child I care about called me from the side of a road, I could hear cars passing by, and she said "this has been my plan."
And for now(fingers crossed), this is a success. Something to celebrate. Life is so hard, and avoiding the difficult doesn't get us anywhere. But it's painful.
It's so painful. All the things said, and unsaid. Done and left undone.
Tonight I wrote a little note about the loss of the normal school year on facebook. The idea of these kids starting a school year on a platform that will never compare to real life is honestly abhorrent to me. I don't know if there is a better way, but if I were a parent I'd be exploring commune living more than ever right now.
I didn't mean to write the note the way it came out, but as I was writing, I realized it touched on a topic I've been thinking about all day today, which is, how hard it is to have hopes and dreams for children, and know you can't make them happen, but try anyway.
There is a lot of grieving in a year of teaching, or being a therapist. It comes with highs and lows. And this year... lower your expectations and then still miss the bar.
But today, I was thinking about parents. I work with parents, it is important that I do. Because if they do not buy in, it is really hard to support a young person who is dependent on them. I got to thank parents today, and remind them how essential they are, how important they are to their child's survival and success... I don't think I could ever oversell the importance, but what I was highlighting was their willingness to try even when everything pointed to failure. They found hope, or faked it well enough, even when it felt hopeless, and by doing so have offered their child a future.
Not a future free of suffering, but one in which connection and meaning are still possible even though there is suffering.
It's really awe inspiring.
I started writing a book a few years ago. A mixture of social studies, my own experiences and values, woven into novel form. The book describes myths and stories over and over, shared as if they are as true as anything else. Playing off the reality of how humans make meaning, we tell stories. The book itself is like a 4th wall break commentary -as most science fiction is. I am not sure anyone will "get it." I am not even sure it will ever be finished.
In the beginning of the book, the west coast is on fire, the climate becomes a mess, people move from place to place, wars, plagues, starvation, and in the midst of this there are glimmers of hope from which people rebuild. A section I wrote several chapters on years ago (but took out), talks about an incompetent leader who plagued by his own insecurities makes rash decisions that hurt billions. It is weird how my observations of humanity, led to predictions in the book that come true, leads to further observations that I get to include in the book. I write over and over about the ash filled sky, but totally forgot about how humans wear masks. How we survive all odds. So now I will add masks to the story... and hope that the other predictions do not pan out. My mom called it dark.
But the title of the book (which I have mostly not discussed except on here) is Promethean Vows, in honor of the titan who knowing he would suffer, continued to support humanity anyway, because he had faith in his creation. I think deep within me, that is the name I give to what it means to be human.
To suffer, and strive anyway, in all the different ways we try, because we choose to.
It's not an animal survival instinct, its the sacred quality that makes us just a little more profoundly tragic and beautiful. Not knocking animals, they are sacred in their own right. But humans make the choice every day. And it shouldn't be taken for granted.
I hate the choices we are making as a society right now on almost every level. I haven't been posting political stuff as much these last few years because I am just sick of it to the core. Even the causes I believe in seem so trivial in comparison to the moral reckoning that we must have. "Black lives matter" "Defund the police" "Abolish ICE" these are some of the shittiest slogans I can think of, and they all point to a basic fundamental that life means absolutely nothing in our society.
(I know some folks might point to abortion and if that led them to standing up for living children, I wouldn't despise the argument, but that movement is completely callous to those who are currently living, so fuck that.)
To be a proper lefty in today's world, I should point to the New Jim Crow, slavery, the genocides, trans rights, etc., but I didn't lose faith in the US entirely until all of those children were gunned down in schools and we did nothing. Black, white, native, latino, asian, boy, girl, trans, intersexed, gay, straight, pan, they didn't even have a chance to figure out what any of that meant! Of course black lives don't matter, immigrants lives don't matter, the poor don't matter, you don't matter, life doesn't matter in this society when children are murdered in schools and no one does anything.
When I was an immature child in middle and high school, the idea and reality of school shootings wasn't as horrifying to me as it was when I became a teacher. But when I was an adult, when I was in charge, suddenly the reality set in: this is our sacred responsibility, our duty above all others, our time to recognize that yes suffering will happen, but we can do something about it, we must!
OUR most vulnerable innocent were slaughtered, and we chose to do nothing.
That is our story, we are a society that when suffering happens, chooses to throw up our hands, do nothing, and say it isn't my fault.
No wonder we are so fucked.
I don't know how covid will play out now that schools are going back in session. Maybe we are sending ourselves to slaughter again, or maybe we have been imprisoning ourselves for no reason. But we aren't even really having the discussions that matter, just running scared to the corners we find the most comforting. Same old story. We know how well that goes.
Where is the discussion about why we even have schools? Chain restaurants? 40 hour work weeks? Traffic jams? Homelessness? The stock market? Health insurance? Police? It's all little whispers that reach the same ears in a loop. I don't need to post 50 political messages a day because everyone on my facebook already agrees with me, and even us well-meaning lefties, do nothing.
It's funny because as much as I despise Trump, he actually gets it. The story matters. His story is all lies and manipulation and blaming others, and I hate it because he is using the mechanism that matters to do the worst possible things - but he gets it. Fascism is so basic, get the main factions to agree to the story of "it isn't my fault, it's theirs!" and you can get away with anything. The story matters. We live our lives by the story. I am not sure the United States will survive this story. I am not sure we should.
And as for covid... and climate change... and capitalism...
Will humans survive -yes of course.
Are people resilient -yes of course.
But what is the story we are telling?
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