Making a Little Difference

I’ve been reflecting lately on how I approach life’s challenges. It’s probably the sort of thing people do who’ve reached my age.

During the active years of the COVID pandemic, when I was mostly confined to home, I think I became more observer than participant in life. I got up in the morning with a sigh, a sense of resignation that “here’s another day.” I watched TV or, if I didn’t watch, I kept it on to see other people and hear some sounds besides my breathing. I saw crises that weren’t mine. I watched as politics unfolded more-or-less as expected. I observed it all and sank a little deeper into my sense of dissatisfaction with life.

Okay, there were occasional bright spots. Calls and notes came from friends, which I appreciated. A few creative times in my studio were hopeful. And the most convincing reason to break out of my self-imposed solitude were my grandchildren. I celebrated first hugs, first steps, first words. I was temporarily buoyed by the sense of obsessive affection that comes with grandmothering.

I didn’t just sit out life for the 2-year COVID stretch. I did some work, posted some essays,  perhaps even did some good for someone. But I also – and sometimes mostly – watched. I noticed. I sighed. And I filled the role of disappointed observer.

What kept me observing and not participating was the sense that I couldn’t make a real difference anyway so why try? I couldn’t change the hearts of MAGA Republicans or repair what they were breaking. I saw millions of Americans suffering lack of housing and food, unable to keep up with inflation, and I didn’t have the resources to care for them. Perhaps the worst was that I couldn’t keep Black men alive in a world where they are seen more as targets than as persons.

And it’s true: I can’t fix most of what’s broken. But the fact that I can’t fix everything doesn’t need to mean I can’t fix anything, or the reality that I can’t make all the difference should keep me from making some difference.

I credit First Lady Betty Ford with convincing me that making a difference in life is like tossing a pebble into a pond and watching the ripples form. If we can make a small difference, that small difference could spawn a larger difference as the ripples of our action move out. It’s like “the butterfly effect” that the flap of a butterfly’s wing in Brazil can spur the formation of a tornado in Texas.

My first step toward getting out of my observer funk is convincing myself that I don’t need to do everything; I only need to do something.

There may be another factor. When I’m down on myself, I tend to withdraw from real participation in the life of others. I isolate and paralyze myself with the notion that I’ve not done enough, not been enough. I should have achieved more in a long lifetime. It supports the “why try anyway” feeling that calls me back to bed for the day.

When, even for a minute, I can feel some sense of satisfaction with what I’ve achieved in life, I start thinking about getting up and doing something useful.

It happens when a high school senior sends an email saying she read my 1992 speech to the Republican National Convention. She says it changed her life and she’s going to perform it in her state’s forensics contest next week.

It happened last week when a man said he’d kept my book by his bedside for decades, reading from it regularly. Really? Wow….

It happens when, holding one of my grandchildren, they look up at me, touch my cheek and gurgle some unknown language of love. This child has come from one of my sons, of whom I am proud, and he has a brother of whom I’m equally proud. Somewhere over the years, I must have done something right as a mother.

When I believe that I have some value and acknowledge that I don’t need to do everything in order to do something, I come back to life. I can’t fix the Republicans but I can give a dollar to a candidate who will try. I can’t repair homelessness but I can support a local effort to develop affordable housing. I can’t eliminate food insecurity or hunger but I can join the board of Project Angel Food that delivered more than a million meals in Los Angeles County last year.

I still need to be careful about exposure to COVID. I want not to become so busy that I have no time for my children and grandchildren. But I’m ready to let go of my role as nothing-but-an-observer. With the resources and time I have left, I want to join you in participating fully in this life.

WTF

Now that Meta is re-opening Instagram and Facebook to Donald Trump with new “guardrails” to protect against Trump being Trump, I’m left to wonder once again what’s going on in our world – and what to say about it.

Meta observed, in its release on this topic, that we are now living in less precarious times than when Trump was taken off Meta’s platforms about two years ago. What Meta did not appear to recognize is that our times are less precarious precisely because there has been less Trump. In other words, we’re now opening the platforms to him because we’ve been safer without him. Excuse me, but…WTF?

If I’m speechless, forgive me. But I simply don’t know what to say (or write) about one thing after another these days. It isn’t as if I’m perplexed by one event or one politician. It’s not one thing. It’s all these things, stacked on top of each other, demanding some kind of thoughtful response. The higher the pile of events becomes, the more I find myself being mute.

·      A six-year-old brings his mother’s pistol to school, shows it to other children including one he threatens to shoot if reported, and eventually – after various warnings to the school authorities – puts a bullet into his teacher’s stomach. Whoa -- this kid is six, as in “six years old?” WTF.

·      Vice President Pence has been Mr. Clean despite laboring for years in a filthy White House. Now it develops that he, too, had top-secret documents drifting around his house these past two years, despite his assurances that it wasn’t true. Turns out, it’s true.

·      A chief investigator for the FBI, one of J. Edgar Hoover’s legacy heroes, turns out to have been taking money from the Russians he was supposed to investigate. Not nice.

·      Ginni Thomas, wife of a Supreme Court Associate Justice, has spoken out and lobbied hard on issues to be decided by the Court. And we’re to believe that the couple has never discussed any of these things at home. I’m speechless at the claim of their evidently speechless marriage; speechless.

·      Kevin McCarthy – who would have sold his children’s souls to the right-wing squad holding his precious speakerdom hostage – wants the nation to believe that Adam Schiff is a danger to America and Marjorie Taylor Greene, defender of the insurrectionists, is a paradigm of patriotism. See Kevin and MTG in their endless hug. See that? Hear them? WTF?

·      In a stunning abuse of the English language and the concept of “fairness,” Georgia Republican Representative Earl “Buddy” Carter has introduced U.S. House Resolution 25 which, in summary, would replace myriad taxes with a 30% flat-tax on all purchases in the U.S. This means the billionaire and the McDonald’s cook would pay the same amount of tax on a loaf of bread. The title of this legislation? “The Fair Tax Act.” WTF?

·      I’ve barely come to grips with one mass shooting before another hits the headlines. Our nation has seen more mass shootings (40) since January 1st than we’ve had days in 2023. We’re averaging more than one per day. What do I say about this? I have no more explanation for all these shootings than I do for one of them, or for the dozens of law enforcement personnel who stood outside Uvalde’s classroom for more than an hour paralyzed by something: fear?

And I’ve gotten this far without saying the name George Santos, Republican Representative to the US House, elected by citizens of New York who just didn’t know any better. His fantasies are stunning and, apparently, endless. Meanwhile, Kevin McCarthy, desperately clinging to a razor-thin House majority, thinks George – having survived an assassination attempt and loss of his shoes at New York City’s busiest intersection -- deserves some committee assignments. This is leadership at work? C’mon.

Some days – and most nights – it’s just very hard to know what I should say. I’m stumped into silence. Numbed. Left with nothing but WTF.

Hoping for The Year of Miracles

I stumbled into 2022 burdened by despair at the damage Trump was doing to America. A rolling pandemic was holding me imprisoned in my own home, mostly alone, mostly troubled. The economy was tanking. Forecasts of a Red Wave in the fall elections, with polls increasingly leaning right, promised worse to come.

By the close of the year, when vaccines were taken and votes were counted, things weren’t as grim as I’d feared. Results were neither as good as I’d hoped nor as bad as I’d feared – which isn’t as ambiguous as it sounds. It means I could at least begin to experiment with something called hope.

The Washington Post’s David Von Drehle recently wrote that “hope is a choice, strengthened through practice; not a reflection of light, but light itself.” I confess that I’ve had little practice with hope in recent years.

I don’t want to be naïve or pollyannish. There’s plenty on the American horizon that’s scary. But when I do an honest survey of the nation’s life and my own, I think there’s reason for encouragement.

·      Attorney General Merrick Garland appears to have Trump in his sights and he’s “following the facts and the law.”

·      Analysts of the 2022 midterm elections report that youth made a huge difference in the outcomes: they cared, they organized and they voted.

·      Democrats narrowly lost the House but held the Senate where they are confirming federal judges as a rate eclipsing Trump’s judicial damage.

·      Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson roared into the Supreme Court as a breath of fresh air, offering bold opinions stated with civility and even humor.

·      Almost daily scientific breakthroughs led to new, promising discoveries of treatments and cures for haunting diseases, prompting one expert to predict that 2023 will be “The Year of Miracles.”

·      The pandemic isn’t gone, but I am no longer house-bound. With masks, vaccines and common sense, I’m once again smelling flowers in my yard.

·      I never expected to see grandchildren. Last week, I was on my phone when a grandchild came prancing into my study, calling my name.

·      Kari Lake lost.

·      I’ve gathered a circle of women who, like me, enjoy knitting and chatting and being together.

·      Ukraine’s President Zelensky is showing the power of rhetoric in service to courage.

·      MAGA is tanking in the courts.

·      For all the hits on President Biden, in two years he secured more laws and funding to address national priorities than any predecessor in the past five decades.

·      Amanda Tyler and her BJC cohorts are leading a crusade called “Christians against Christian Nationalism.”

·      In response to rising antisemitism, communities are rallying to the defense of synagogues and Jews.

·      Many law enforcement systems are wrestling seriously with the history of killing Black men.

And I liked what Michele Norris said of hope: “For me, hope sometimes shimmers in the little things you can see that help toss off that forbidding cloak of cynicism and despair: the return of festive holiday lights, the promise of daffodils that will pop up in the spring, the stories of congressional aides from warring political parties who secretly play softball together because they discovered they actually like each other….”

President Obama understood that hope was audacious. It takes courage. The risk of catastrophic disappointment is high.

But wearing bad news as a prickly garment does us no good. All my sleepless hours and darkest worries made not a single contribution to my life or my community. I was frozen by fears that would not let me act on hope. 

No more. There are hungry neighbors who need to be fed; if I serve the cause of the hungry with food I’ll be repaid with hope and joy. Children are cowering from adults whose lives are drenched in drugs and alcohol; let me cradle the children while offering their parents an opportunity to heal. Immigrants need a welcome, not a wall; let us find hope together and, with it, happiness.

A third-of-a-century after being diagnosed with HIV/AIDS, and more than a decade after cancer was added to my AIDS, I see that I’m still here. Imagine that. I’m still here for the bonus years. Knowing how precious these days are, I’m ready for some hope “strengthened by practice.”