Monthly Archives: November 2024

Holding the Activist Heart

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What are you an activist for?

What does it cost you? What does it cost others?
How does it affect your relationships with them?

At the end of your life, how do you want your activism to be remembered? What are you willing to give up for that legacy? What do you need to do to make it more likely?

Crusader
Warrior
Champion
Advocate

How do you describe your role, your leadership, and the work?

I recommended Simon Sinek’s Start With Why to someone again today.
Meaning. Purpose. Mission. Vision.
Once we find these for ourselves, we settle. We sense direction and movement, that low rumbling purr of motivated inspiration.
Optimism. Patience. Inspiration. Perseverance. Faith.
These energies flow and propel, provide momentum to overcome obstacles and setbacks. We commit. Through persistence we gain confidence, flexibility, agility, resilience. We become veteran master players of The Infinite Game. The work is endless; there will always be more to do; the ultimate goal will not be achieved in our lifetime.
And still, “That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.”

I know my Why, have for a while now. I root down deeply in it. I feel stable and strong, grounded and powerful. I also feel light and supple, mobile and elastic. As Sinek says, when we know our Why, we can be flexible with the How and the What. Starting with Why gives rise to creativity, connection, synergy, and possibility. To be an activist with an unassailable and still limber Why makes me more effective.

Tonight I wonder how to do activist work without an adversarial approach, without burning out, and without burning bridges. My Why is that our relationships save us. The best relationships elevate us, integrate divergence and even conflict into a fluid, complementary movement of tension and slackness, push and pull, give and take–yin and yang. What happens when my yin activism meets your yang?

I wish for all activists to express what they are For more than what they are against. I know that’s not always feasible or realistic to expect from emotional and empassioned humans. Conflict is inevitable and not inherently bad. Yet, I know we can do it better. I know activists who vehemently, even spitefully oppose others. It makes me sad and a little desperate. I know it’s not my work to oppose the adversarial activist. I must find that way of integrative flow, that relationship that allows us all to do our work side by side, respectful of one another’s humanity, holding and sharing space.

We may advocate for divergent, opposing, and conflicting causes. That is nature, and human nature risks mortal sacrifices for the ideals and values we hold most dearly. Energy, power, and forces collide. We get to decide how and whether the results are destructive or constructive. It’s never too late to change course.

Tonight I Hold Our Activist Hearts–all of them. May we choose our words, actions, and relationships from a place of humane love and connection more than anything else, and may we be at peace with our choices at the ends of our lives.

Holding Love

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from Instagram, 11/20/2024

I’m tired tonight, friends.

Husband says he sees November as stressful for me every year (for the tenth year in a row now), referring to the 30 days of daily blogging. I don’t want to admit it, but it’s at least partially true. It shows in my eating habits, I didn’t quite have my edge in the gym yesterday, and there are likely other consequences. I’m not losing sleep these last couple years, which is a drastic improvement from before. And I’m still cooking regularly now, which is also better! So it’s not bad news at all; this is good stress. It’s probably a 95% challenge, 5% threat sensation, and 10/10 meaning. It’s already two-thirds over, and I think these posts could be some of my best writing yet. Win-win-win!

One of the biggest challenges the last 20 days (starting 10/31) has been fully articulating an idea that may have only occurred to me within 12 hours of posting. I feel I have met that challenge well, and I’m proud of the output so far as it is honest and offered wholeheartedly.

My first solid idea for tonight’s post came to me while eating dinner and listening to What Is Health? by Peter Sterling. It was so exciting and also quite complex, so I procrastinated. It needs to marinate a bit more. Then the universe sent me the Instagram story in the photo above from my friend James. It reads:

Unconditional love really exists in each of us. It is part of our deep inner being. It is not so much an active emotion as a state of being. It’s not ‘I love you’ for this or that reason, not ‘I love you if you love me.’ It’s love for no reason, love without an object.” –Ram Daas

My immediate response to James: “OMG YAAAASS!!! What if we all tapped into this deep well of Agape just a little more every day!?!? [Home Alone face emoji, smiley surrounded by hearts emoji]
James replied, “Yes, what if?? What’s stopping us?”
We agreed that conversation is best saved for our next in person communion.
I shared the story on my own account with a similar admonishing question, feeling a full body rush of joy, optimism, and possibility.

We tend to think of love as an emotion. We probably experience it as such at least some of the time–a limbic sensation that comes over us and then dissipates–a signal of something to pay attention to, something that matters to us. But I learned recently that love is more of a drive, like hunger or thirst; it manifests consistently, if in waves, impelling us to behave and relate in ways that advance our own survival. Romantic love drives us to partner and procreate. Pair bonding and parental love drives us to tend to our progeny so our genes may live on for another generation. So if we think of it this way and apply it to relationships in nested scale (family unit, village, state, nation, all of humanity), how does that alter our perspective?

To me, it all suddenly feels so simple. We are all here to love one another, to help us all survive and thrive. We are all someone’s child. Many of us are someone’s sibling, someone’s parent. I hope we are all someone’s good friend. We all share this planet, this lifetime. We are all here. Now. Living. Doing our Best. So when I’m tired, I can relax and rest in this one simple idea: Love.

What if we accept Ram Daas’s premise? What if unconditional love really is part of our deep inner being? And what if we fully accepted, acknowledged, and manifested this just a little more every day? How would that feel? What would we do as a result? How would we be?
I feel at peace. I feel confident that we can figure it all out, whatever it is, ODOMOBaaT–one day, one moment, one breath at a time. I smile more. I approach people with ease and friendliness, as if any person I meet could be my next new good friend. I am my favorite self.

So I Hold Love for Us tonight, friends. It took 20 days for it to emerge this month. I wondered when and how it would come up; it was #6 on my pre-NaBlo prep list of 30 things to Hold. How does it feel when you Hold Love? Where and when is it easy and difficult? How and what do you do when it’s really hard?

What if …?

Holding Understanding

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Friends, when we can muster it, I have an invitation:

The next time we have a thought that starts with, “I don’t understand…” let us take a deep breath, get quiet, and actually try to understand. I think most of us stop well short of this effort, especially in conflict. If we all did it just a little more, though, some of our most severe divisions could lessen by a lot.

In 2021 I wrote in The Intention-Impact Gap:

“Years ago I had a hard conversation with a Black classmate.  He explained to me the experience of being Black in America—what it was like to worry about his own safety and that of his loved ones every day, of seeing innocent Black men killed at the hands of police, the history and ongoing oppression of racism, both overt and implicit…  It was overwhelming.  I said, ‘I can’t imagine what that must be like…’  At the time I honestly meant it as an expression of humility.  In retrospect, I could (should?) have said, ‘I know I will never experience what you experience, AND as I think about what you have shared with me, I AM imagining what that must be like, and it’s overwhelming.’

“Though I had intended my words to be connecting, he told me in no uncertain terms that they had the opposite impact.  Really, he asked?  You really can’t imagine what it would be like to send your son out every morning knowing he could be profiled by police?  You can’t imagine your family being captured and sold into slavery, separated mercilessly on an auction block, or hunted, mutilated and murdered for simply being different?  How can you not imagine it?  Where was my sense of shared humanity, he demanded? My declaration of ‘I can’t imagine,’ far from showing caring or understanding, signaled to him my unwillingness to relate.”

“I don’t understand how whole swaths of people could vote against their own interests.”
“I don’t understand how half the country voted for hate.”
“I don’t understand why ____ people get so offended at _____ words.”
“I don’t understand why (they/you) get so emotional about _____ .”

I can’t imagine, I don’t understand–both expressions signal a separation, a disconnect. They come across as insensitive, unempathetic to those who seek to be understood (“I did not vote for hate–that is your projection on me.”) At worst, they convey condescension and disdain. Expressed among those who similarly cannot imagine and do not understand, these phrases further solidify our us-them tribalist sentiments. Dissenting in this context, suggesting how we might imagine or understand, can feel extremely unsafe.

Here’s what we know about humans: We are emotional first, especially under stress. We reason and rationalize second. We all do it. Not that the rationalizations don’t make sense or are not valid. Disconnect arises when we assume ourselves to be totally rational (delusion #1) and others to be totally irrational (delusion #2). We think our own beliefs, positions, and behaviors ‘make total sense’ and others’ do not because they are inconsistent or, well, rationalized. We fail to recognize the inconsistencies in our own ‘reasoning’. The truth is, all of our beliefs and conclusions make sense to ourselves.

If you think you do understand someone else’s distress, check and see if it’s only in your thinking brain. If you can imagine in cognitive and practical terms but cannot imagine how it feels when somebody describes their fear, hopelessness or other emotions in a specific context, then there’s likely more work to do.

More from 2021:

“At first I felt defensive and misunderstood.  Why was he rejecting me when I honestly thought I was being supportive?  I had to think about it a while, and really listen for what he was saying.  It was painful and humbling to realize that he was right, at least partially.  I could imagine all of those things, but maybe I didn’t want to.  Maybe it was too uncomfortable, and I exercised my privilege of not having to think about it, because it didn’t affect me personally?  Maybe it made me feel helpless?  Maybe I knew on some level that I harbor racist and prejudiced biases and ideas?  My classmate was teaching me the difference between empathy and sympathy.  Brené Brown makes the distinction thusly:  “Empathy fuels connection, while sympathy drives disconnection.”  I had intended the former; my impact was the latter.”

My point about imagining and understanding is empathy–the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. Sympathy is feeling for someone in distress–it keeps a distance that is palpable. We have to look into one another’s emotional minds with our own to find a deeper level of understanding and connection. It’s incredibly vulnerable and uncomfortable, hence the avoidance.

I Hold Understanding for Us. It’s a lot of work. It requires us to get both humble and vulnerable, which our culture shuns. If we are ever to heal our political divisions and reclaim a high-functioning democracy, however, we must practice.