After the Doomscroll, the Dishes

How do we not take the bait?

I know many people who feel afraid right now, for good reasons.

It feels like the world has descended into chaos and pain. We are living in trying times indeed.

When our short term safety is threatened, our long terms goals and dreams become hazy. We need to take care of our own while we can, we think. We need to create a safety net so those we love won’t get hurt.

I’ve been thinking about this for the last couple of weeks. We definitely need to speak out against violence and hate right now. We need to take care of ourselves and our community. We need to spread information and combat disinformation. There are many things that we need to do, if we want to remain in a functioning democracy.

But meanwhile, we have to do the laundry. After the doomscroll, the dishes. After we learn about the latest atrocity, we still have to make dinner. This is the strange part of living in such tumultuous times.

In these times, labels become weapons. Migrants are migrants, not humans. Criminals are criminals, not people. When we are afraid, the other is quite obviously the cause of our fear, and we think we must crush them. But in reality, the fear is already in us, a seed which was planted eons ago, by our parents, by our friends…