Tim Desmond - 25 Jun

I would not have you descend into your own dream. I would have you be a conscious citizen of this terrible and beautiful world.

TA-NEHISI COATES

O n November 14, 2016, just six days after Donald Trump won the election, my wife, Annie, woke up in the middle of the night in excruciating pain. A trip to the ER revealed that the cancer shed been fighting for more than a year had spread into her abdomen and a tumor was blocking her left kidney. Several long hours later, she emerged from surgery with a plastic tube implanted in her side that drained urine into a bag. I was told that shed likely have this tube for the rest of her life. When our three-year-old son visited, I had to teach him not to touch his moms tube.

That was a moment I could hear despair calling mealmost audibly. It said, Your life is shit. Everything is completely fucked. Your best option is to go cower in the corner.

In that intense moment, I thought of a story Id heard the Vietnamese Buddhist monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh tell countless times over the twenty years Ive studied with him. Its a story about a banana tree and it goes like this:

One day, Thich Nhat Hanh was meditating in the jungle in Vietnam and he saw a young banana tree with just three leaves. The first leaf was fully grown, broad and flat and dark green. The second leaf was still partially curled beneath the first, and the third leaf was very light green and tender, just beginning to unfurl.

This was during the middle of the Vietnam War, and he was leading a huge organization of young people whod help rebuild villages thatd been destroyed by bombs and napalm. Hed spent nearly every day with villagers whose lives had been ravaged by war, and hed witnessed the deaths of several of his closest friends. The central question in his life at that moment was how to reconcile the intensity of his calling to help suffering people with his mindfulness practice. He knew that he needed his mindfulness practice to keep from being overwhelmed with despair, but how could he justify cultivating peace and joy in himself while so many other people were dying?

He was holding this question in mind and looking at the young banana tree when he had a deep insight. It occurred to him that the eldest banana leaf was fully enjoying her life as a leaf. She was absorbing the sun and rain, radiating beauty and peacefulness. However, she hadnt abandoned the other leaves to pursue her own happiness. In fact, as she nourished herself, basking in the sunshine, she was also nourishing the younger leaves, the banana tree, and the entire jungle. He decided that human beings are just like this. As we nourish ourselves with peacefulness and joy, were also supporting the well-being of every other person in our lives.

In that hospital room, as I looked at my wife and son, I couldnt avoid seeing how much they needed me. They didnt need me to do anything in particular. They needed me to stay with them and help them to see that they werent alonethat life was still worth living. If I could somehow find a way not to lose touch with whats beautiful and joyful in lifeif I could tap into something in me deeper than despairthen Id have something to offer the people I love most.

DEEPER THAN DESPAIR

Looking around today, its hard to escape the conclusion that our world is exquisitely fucked. Of course, theres a lot of beauty in the world at the same time, but the sheer magnitude of violence, greed, hatred, and straight-up stupidity can be overwhelming if we let ourselves pay attention and care.

The terrifying part for me is what happens to good-hearted people when we get overwhelmed by all of it. Were committed to paying attention and caring, and we refuse to escape into whatever privilege we can find. However, the intensity of suffering we experience poisons us, and we lose touch with our humanity. We either end up in despair on one side, or we fall into toxic righteousness on the other.

Toxic righteousness is a term created by writer and activist Starhawk to describe the anger-fueled self-certainty that pervades our political discourse. Toxic righteousness is what happens when were mere inches from despair but somehow summon enough strength to lash out instead of collapsing. In that state, were incapable of listening, and often dont even see why we should, since our opponents are less than human. If anyone tries to say that our vitriol and indignation arent helping, we get violently defensive because we believe the only alternative is giving up entirely.

The challenge of staying human in a fucked-up world comes down to how we respond to the immensity of suffering that confronts us from every direction. Whether Im suffering from things in my own life, things in the lives of people I love, or the pain I feel when I pay attention to the conditions in our world (and its usually all of those), I have to find a way to take care of the compassion in me so that I dont end up overwhelmed. If I cant, Ill find myself in despair, possessed by toxic righteousness, or (worst of all) Ill find whatever little bubble of privilege I can escape into and stop caring.