Hi everyone, I spent the past three days working on one chapter of my new book, tentatively called “Catchy Phrase: Insert Intriguing Subtitle Here.” It’s about reimagining everything in our sector, from how we fundraise, to how we do capacity building and evaluation and hiring, and so on. An entire chapter may be devoted to the role of hummus in our work. The publisher has been on my case, setting up several intermediate deadlines, which is good, because left to my own devices, I will binge-watch Derry Girls for the eight time.
Anyway, I have been frazzled, so please don’t expect a coherent post this week. Actually, it’s best to anticipate that as the manuscript deadline (March 11th) approaches, I will become more and more unraveled, eventually going full “Jack Nicholson in The Shining,” and these blog posts will become increasingly nonsensical, possibly unhinged. Or worse, I will start reusing jokes, like this The Shining one, not remembering what’s in my head, and what’s already been put down in writing somewhere.
Last Fall, my siblings and kids and I had a pumpkin-carving contest at home. That was super fun. We placed them all outside on the front porch. As the days passed though, the pumpkins started rotting. Too lazy to throw them into the compost bin, I chucked the three moldy abominations into the flower bed, where they became a feast for the neighborhood rodents.
For months, the pumpkins rotted, their brilliant orange rinds taking on the sallow-greyish complexion of an executive director who has faced too many budget shortfalls. During the winter, layers of frost covered the bite marks left by our murine friends, who continued feeding on them. By April, though, the pumpkins had melted into the earth, and a seedling was standing in their place. One seedling! Over the months, the little fella grew and grew. I was astonished to see several baby pumpkins peeking out from under the leaves throughout the summer. This fall, we had two beautiful orange pumpkins!
I’m telling you this story because winter is approaching (at least here in the Northern hemisphere), and the days are getting shorter and colder. And it’s all made exponentially worse by what we’re anticipating in January: the most corrupt and destructive political regime any of us has ever experienced in the US taking formal power.
I’ve been feeling like crap the past several weeks, like a rotting pumpkin battered by the elements and gnawed on by more than a few rats, and I’m sure you can relate. Reading the news has been dreadful, thinking that it will be one horrible thing after another, to the point where we’ll be exhausted and overwhelmed by all the chaos, incompetence, and sheer intentional cruelty and malice.
But what I’ve also noticed is that during moments when I don’t feel like crap, I feel crappy for not feeling like crap. The survivor’s guilt hits hard. Do we deserve to experience joy when people are suffering? Is it OK to watch a funny show when multiple genocides are happening that we can’t seem to stop? Can I take in little bits of awe and beauty in the world, or create moments of levity, when so many people are so terrified of what’s been happening, and of what’s to come?
I have been finding solace in the teachings of much wiser leaders, such as Kleaver Cruz, who founded the Black Joy Project. They are quoted in this article:
“Black Joy is not … dismissing or creating an ‘alternate’ black narrative that ignores the realities of our collective pain; rather, it is about holding the pain and injustice…in tension with the joy we experience. It’s about using that joy as an entry into understanding the oppressive forces we navigate through as a means to imagine and create a world free of them.”
This is a good reminder and lesson for all of us in this work. Throughout history, even when faced with some of the worst forms of oppressions humans can inflict upon one another, people have grounded joy as a form of resistance and survival. My father sharpened his sense of humor, using it to survive re-education camp after Saigon fell. Joy, love, laughter, time spent together, food, music, art, family, Derry Girls, these things are only self-indulgent if we let them be; otherwise, they can be hopeful and grounding anchors for us to imagine and work toward a better world.
Trying to cheer myself up in one of my crappier moments, I perused the inspiring stories at Beautiful Trouble, which I highly recommend. One story that stuck out to me was about how Antanas Mockus, the mayor of Bogotá, replaced cops with mimes. Here’s an excerpt:
“After piloting the project with theatre students, Mockus fired 3,200 traffic cops from a notoriously corrupt police force and then offered them the option to be retrained and hired back — as mimes. Four hundred accepted the offer, trading their handcuffs and batons for white gloves and face paint.
“Each day, the mimes moved through traffic and seized on opportunities to dramatize the struggles and frustrations of drivers and pedestrians. They heaped scorn on cars blocking pedestrian crosswalks and then gestured as if repainting the crosswalk, endorsing its existence. They helped elderly people cross the street, and pretended to push cars blocking intersections out of the way. In addition to the mimes, Mockus also distributed 350,000 ‘thumbs-up/thumbs-down’ cards that citizens could use to peacefully express approval or disapproval of others’ traffic behaviour.”
The result? Traffic deaths dropped by 50%! This is hilarious and amazing. Human beings can be so creative. And just the fact that four hundred cops agreed to become mimes is one of the best things I’ve read. Delightful!
I’m sure we’ll all feel moments of despair over the next several years. And the survivor’s guilt never completely goes away. But I’m giving myself permission to hold both the sadness, grief, and anger, as well as the moments of happiness, awe, and humor I can find. And I hope you do too. Let us use this tension to fuel our our strength and courage, so we can keep fighting for a just and equitable world.
Now, if anyone needs me, I’m going to bury this year’s rotting pumpkins in the flower beds, so that the circle of life continues, and I have something joyful to look forward to in the spring.
