The world doesn't owe us flowers
On beating back helplessness
I wrote a poem for the last inauguration. I tried to say what I felt as plainly as possible. Some lines—like those below—still feel relevant. I remain angry and hurt and a little baffled (though strangely not surprised?) at having ended up here. One of the things that makes a tragedy a tragedy is that it didn’t have to happen this way. We had other choices in November. Here we are.
It's so fucking hard to know what to feel about a country full of people like us.
No poems this time around. No grand statements of shock and outrage, either. No invective, no empty social media vows to resist.
I know what he is.
I know what he’s about.
What I plan to resist this time are my own feelings of powerlessness and helplessness. When I indulge in those things, I do his work for him. I do their work, really. The sad, sick lot of them. Those who would weaponize hate, fear, and misinformation, in order to profit from it and savor the suffering of others. To the extent I can, I refuse to do their work for them.
In the meantime, I am not powerless. I am not helpless. Every day, I have students to look out for and serve, a teenager to raise and educate, a wife to try to somehow be worthy of. I have friends and neighbors who are strengthened by our listening to each other, by our understanding and connection and presence. I have a community to participate in and advocate for. I have essays to write and stories to tell that embody the values that matter to me: courage, honesty, selflessness, and unyielding self-examination. I have beauty to chase and be devoured by. Justice to seek. Illusions to shatter. Uncertainties to embrace. Work to do.
If I want to rage against the machine, I can be a more mindful consumer of goods and services. I can walk instead of driving. I can put up some bird boxes for the bluebirds that have arrived at our feeder.
I can tell the truth.
“We can no longer let the people in power decide what is politically possible,” Greta Thunberg said. “We can no longer let the people in power decide what hope is….Hope is telling the truth. Hope is taking action.”
Do what you can, as you can do it. For my wife today that meant cold sowing some white poppy seeds. Tonight we’re supposed to get 9 inches of heavy snow. At lunchtime it was a balmy 50 degrees and last week’s snow had melted and the black soil looked ready. So out she went with her seed packs to stand tossing seeds by the handful into a spot where last summer she’d filled 16 garbage bags with poison ivy, pulling it out vine after vine. Quiet, unglamorous work. The kind that matters.
Will we get flowers in the spring? Will the poison ivy stay beat back? I couldn’t begin to tell you. It’s possible we’ve wasted our time. But if having to know such things ever became the condition I put upon trying, I can say this with certainty: I’d never grow. The reason to sow white poppies in January is because that’s when you sow white poppies. The world doesn’t owe us flowers.
Show up. Do the work.
Inside the seeds of our tiniest actions are the flowers of hope. Sow wildly, my friends, if only to remind the rest of us how.
Steve,
I can honestly say I am grateful to be in this era alongside others like you. I share your values. Today feels heavy, somber. It's also interesting to me that we celebrate and honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. today. And it's my son's sixth birthday. A reminder to me that all that's wrong with the world somehow melds with all that is still right. And that as writers, our responsibility is to show up and tell the truth. I will honor that commitment.
I don’t know how you did it (yes I do), but you’ve got me biting back tears in a public space. Thanks for thawing my numb nausea, for reminding me to lean toward the light and grow. Good luck with the poppies!