Now is the time to remind ourselves who we are.
Who we are doesn't change when the imperfect democracy you were proud to be a part of is morphing into a nihilist dictatorial oligarchy.
We are still awkward, brave, and kind... and proud of it.
We do not have to become "harder."
Once, when I was the manager of a teen jobs program on an island in Boston Harbor, we were holding a feedback circle, giving each other positive and constructive criticism, including us staff managers.
When it was my turn, I faced all 22 of my employees, each taking turns giving their 26-year-old boss their thoughts on how I was doing my job. Yeesh, looking back, that was a brave undertaking. Teen after teen, and even my middle staff managers, had similar advice: you should be stricter with us (first of all, it is striking that they were asking for this, but that's a topic for another day). But the last teen to go was Shauntera (or Shaunee). With her megawatt smile that ceaselessly radiated kindness, she told me, "Don't change a thing. You are perfect just the way you are."
The wisdom of this 17-year-old has stuck with me now for 17 years.
The following year, the majority opinion was still ringing in my ears, and I couldn't help but feel obligated to try being "stricter." I realized my mistake almost immediately. The strict me never worked, and never would work.
The awkward brave and kind me is just me, plain and simple. It's how I live my truth, how I authentically contribute to society, how I make the room brighter when I'm in it.
Lately, I'm feeling less alone in noticing this cacophonous, rabid nationwide shift to "hardness", distrust, fear, greed, power-grabbing, blatant lying, and bullying-- though others are at varying degrees of loss to explain it.
Take Prentis Hemphill, who observes that the shift is "not just anti-democratic, it's anti-vulnerability, anti-relationship, collective responsibility, connection, all of that." She notices the prevailing philosophy is "that we have to harden ourselves, we have to not feel for each other, and erase history and its ramifications." Her stab at why this is happening? Because "we are emotionally and relationally underdeveloped for the times we are in."
Dr. Shefali Tsabary explains the phenomenon as the scourge of the "raging unchecked ego on steroids on full display. It's always destroyed our world and it's destroying our world now" and that it begins in our homes with how we raise our children. When children are taught that power must be stolen from and wielded over others instead of cultivating it from within, and that to connect and form relationships with others they must be brainwashed, belittled, and controlled instead of forming meaningful caring connections, we get MAGA.
And in the New York Times' latest reflection on "How COVID Remade America", the first major theme is the shift towards "hyperindividualism", observing that, "isolated, we saw one another first as threats and then as something less than real." Their doomsday view is that, "over the long sweep of liberal history, our circle of empathy had expanded steadily, until it encompassed nearly the whole globe; now it snapped back, as tight as a rubber band."
These realities, or anti-realities, leave me disoriented and exasperated. But it remains true that I will live my life wholeheartedly believing in community care, in radical honesty, in the gray area of nuance. Echoing Dr. Shefali, my personal power and internal knowing is unshaken. I am still awake to the vital need for truth, beauty, connection, collective responsibility, and vulnerability in the world. I will not let the madness of the mob harden me.
