This newsletter is my part of an ongoing conversation among colleagues who’ve had a rough week. I share two or three pieces of the puzzle that feel the most important, hazard a guess about what to expect next, and offer at least one useful thing to do.
Hello friends,
It’s been a very long short week, hasn’t it? Today was particularly intense, but I’m glad to be wrapping it up with you.
On days when looking at my schedule feels overwhelming, I try to remind myself that the meetings are not impediments to my work, they ARE my work. Those conversations are where so much happens - decisions get made, sure, but more importantly, we’re creating connections, building clarity, and on good days, making breakthroughs. On great days, like today, I can see all the pieces fitting together and the engines starting to whir. Sure, I came out of each meeting with a much longer to-do list than I went in with, but good grief, I love it.
I watched a brilliant scientist fully (finally!) realize that her book-in-progress is brilliant. It took reading a lucid, beautiful book written by one of her friends to help her see how exactly to realize her own ambitions. Our work can unlock things for each other in ways we never imagined. I made tentative plans with new collaborators who feel like they’re changing the game. I caught up with the fellows, co-founders, and collective members who have changed my life. In our various ways, we decided what to worry about now, what to cope with later, and what we can’t afford to worry about. It feels like walking through an orchard: I’m coming back with fistfuls of wildflowers and a collection of interesting rocks I picked up along the way,
This was week 19. Everything is terrible, but I brought you some plums.
Prepare yourself. What exactly that means depends on your context, vulnerabilities, and history.
Maybe it means coming up to speed on history, like members of this unconventional book club are doing. Maybe it means hardening yourself as a target for harassment, or doing some legwork on legal defense funds before you need them. Maybe it’s learning and practicing de-escalation and other bystander intervention techniques. Maybe it’s leading the book club or teach-ins yourself.
Maybe it means reallocating funds or coming up to speed so you can rebudget effectively. I am specifically thinking about those of us managing lab or organizational budgets. How should we be deploying reserves or resources - when does it make sense to invest those now instead of squirrelling them away?
Maybe preparing means figuring out which groups to join, so that whatever volunteer time you may have is channeled effectively. If intense, sustained call volume to representatives is the best way to avert the budget disasters I’ve written about tonight, and that’s a tactic that makes sense for you to support, do you have what you need? If you are more oriented toward public protest, do you know about the June 14 No Kings protests? Do you have a plan for recruiting people to go with you?
Most importantly, are you prepared to confront the cynicism of those in your circles who will tell you that your efforts are doomed? I’ve struggled with that lately, so I’ll share this Nick Cave quote that helped me:
Cynicism is not a neutral position — and although it asks almost nothing of us, it is highly infectious and unbelievably destructive. In my view, it is the most common and easy of evils.
I know this because much of my early life was spent holding the world and the people in it in contempt. It was a position both seductive and indulgent…
Unlike cynicism, hopefulness is hard-earned, makes demands upon us, and can often feel like the most indefensible and lonely place on Earth. Hopefulness is not a neutral position either. It is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism. Each redemptive or loving act, as small as you like… keeps the devil down in the hole.
It says the world and its inhabitants have value and are worth defending. It says the world is worth believing in. In time, we come to find that it is so.
May it be so,
Liz