The only way out is through

This morning, I realized just how fragile a defense against grief my morning routine of Wordle + crosswords + meditation is. A need for novelty had me start out the day with a podcast instead and I ended up weeping quietly into my coffee over a description of this week’s bombings and call for the world to care. As my daughter recently wrote: I am not OK and I don’t know anyone who is.

But, of course, I am OK in the most basic sense. I am safe. I have housing. I am fed. I benefit from all types of privilege, including being racialized as white, presumed straight and Christian, and having a European passport. I am also mostly able to block out the news. And, as it turns out, the ability to block out the news is the ultimate privilege these days.

The tension between my privilege and the horrors of the world used to paralyze me. It still does sometimes. How to hold what we do to each other in the name of values that long since have lost all meaning, and not buckle under the weight? That feeling says, there is nothing I can do that can ever be enough to make up for the suffering my privilege is causing, right now, and throughout history. Losing myself in this guilt used to feel productive, somehow, or at the very least cathartic. At least I knew.

But it is not the way out of here.

The way out of here says, grieving is essential. Love is essential. Self-knowledge is key. The way out of here says, there is always something we can do, however little, every day, to take a step closer to embodying a community of care. The way out of here, paraphrasing Rabbi Tarfon, says: the enormity of this work is not the point. The point is to show up with all that we have, and do that work with love. The point is to know that “all that we have” is not always the same amount, but it is always the amount we must give. Today, tomorrow, and every day.