Navigating the Current Existential Malaise

Estimated Reading Time: 12 minutes

I've been reviewing books, audiobooks, and graphic novels for years. Currently, it's mostly been young adult graphic novels for Publishers Weekly. Recently, I was enjoying a really great graphic novel. One that had me smiling because it focused on a young teen coming into their sexuality. The story didn't talk down to its reader and yet was sweet, kind, and complex with everyone in the story. It sought to understand the tensions and elevate the love. It's the kind of book that was non-existent in my teenage years. And the thing is, the reoccurring thought going through my head as I read was this: this book is going to be banned in the very communities that it is needed. 

The thought played into all the feels I've been navigating--for the last few years but more heightened in the last year, when it felt very evident that Trump would win re-election. And now, in the face of the first monrh of his administration, has left me in a challenging space. 

I do understand the many reasons why he did win and why people would vote against the status quo; I've read and listened enough over the last few years to get the appeal. There's much that I disagree with it, but I see the allure as Tressie McMillan Cottom captures well. 

Photo by Tom Jur on Unsplash

The Current Existential Malaise

But if I'm being honest, things can feel really bleak. I've been calling it the existential malaise and I feel it a lot these days. In fact, when in some conversations with folks, I fear that my typical more sunny disposition has come across more as a storm-cloud. For instance, at a breakfast recently a friend invited me to share some possible wisdom about getting through an administration that has made it absolutely clear it wants people like myself and others that I care and love to not exist or to exist in dehumanized states. 

What I said focused on the fact that the current state of the country (and world) is not just about Trump; the status quo still wasn't great before this turn. We live in an incredibly complex world. A world with many invisible systems that allow us to live our lives without second thought. By and large, we never doubt that our toilets will flush, buildings won't collapse, lights will turn on (and not electrocute us) when we flip the switch, streetlights will work, roads and bridges won't collapse and the like. We're surprised when things don't work. 

The disregard for human life and the environment, the degree to which we're made easily distracted with devices, content, and self-preservation, the unaffordability and instability of being adults navigating renting/owning, child-rearing, healthcare, parent-care, education, job availability/opportunity, stagnant wages, and a myriad of other daily challenges makes our lives feel so exhausting already. 

We are deeply invested in a structure of economics focused on reproducing itself with or without the elements or experiences that allow humans to actively and meaningfully participate in life. And, in reality, we don't know how to think or act our way out of it. Because while we can choose different leaders--like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic--we aren't able to change boats. Many folks are deeply tied or deeply aspire to certain investments that come to have an outsized and complicated pathway to acquisition. We want houses (not homes), retirement plans, continued health, and stable jobs.

It all has me thinking about two books. The first, Michael Lewis's The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy explores the ways that the first Trump administration ineptitude left numerous vulnerabilities in safety and security of the country and its citizenry. But what was ineptitude and negligence in the first term appears to be intention and the goal in this second term. The second, Guru Madhavan's Wicked Problems: How to Engineer a Better World explores the complexity of different challenges that we have found ways to solve through a mixture of practices and frameworks. For instance, how we went from knowing we can fly in machines to how we actually create the structures and supports to train pilots and the systems needed to keep planes from routinely crashing. These books keep me thinking about how what we have is incredibly complex, easy to destroy, and terribly hard to rebuild. 

All of that worries me and sits with me as we hear each new missive, directive, or order and to know that a lot of folks are ok with all of this. So those big things stir inside my head and I worry about our ability to sustain attention and focus on what is and isn't meaningful. Changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico is a distraction but damn, if we don't fall for it. 

I feel all of that--and at times, it feels too heavy to lift. It pushes the fear and angst to feel numb, be distracted, or just lose hope. And, of course, that's the goal:  to stun, to paralyze, to exhaust, to feel powerless, to do nothing. Muzzle velocity as they say. 

And yet, I'm feeling more hopeful by the day. Not the naive hopefulness that this will all go away or that this will be an easy fix. It's a different kind of hope. It's been formed from conversations and tender moments of concern, care, and angst in the face of actual threat to people. It's shown up in the fact that none of this is new--that just as authoritarians have playbooks, so do those who resist or find meaningful ways to exist despite systems that openly desire them to not exist. A hope that has been formed from deeper bonds with people in my life and the building of new ones with people I'm encountering who are also grappling with all of this and believing it is so far beyond the pale of normal. People that can help normalize the fact that what is happening is perverse and there are different ways to live and thrive than what is being offered. 

Finding My Our Way

So what is sustaining me in this?  I'll share what's working for me--I hope others will share what's working for them. 

I'm trying to stay informed but be thoughtful in filtering how much and what kind of information gets to me. Ever since reading Michael Parenti's Inventing Reality in the late 1990s, I've always been skeptical and hesitant to watch news. Generally speaking, I can't find a compelling reason to watch news that isn't better met with reading it. But I definitely regularly engaged in watching hot-takes on news (Daily Show, Stephen Colbert, Seth Myers, etc). That has drastically fallen off the radar. Nowadays, I limiting how much news I read and decreasing my social media consumption. I'm sticking to a few news newsletters and a few other sources that I've found give me solid perspective and insight but avoid the more sensational writing (and unfortunately, so much has become or is written for sensationalism--thanks, surveillance capitalism).

I doing a bit more writing. Not just this kind of writing but other writing projects. I'm finding I'm digging more into some fiction writing but also journaling. It's been helpful to both create as well as exorcise the concerns and worries. It also reminds me of several of the sound voices that I've heard say--that now is a time to create--that art itself can be resistance; that imagination and creation can be used to meet the destructive and unimaginative efforts of authoritative regimes.  In this vein, I'm reminded of this talk by my friend, Lee-Sean Huang on Rehearsing Utopia: How to Practice Hope in a Dumpster Fire World (10:25 minutes) and remembering that creativity and putting things into the world is itself, an act of hope and also feeds hope.

I'm definitely reading more poetry. This includes books of poetry but also, three places that email poetry fairly regularly:  Library of Congress, Poetry Foundation, and Poets.org (if you got other recs for this--leave them in the comments!). I've always struggled with poetry but do find that so long as I don't commit to the idea that I have to understand and make sense of every poem, it's a much smoother experience. Rather, I read and see if the poem speaks to me and if it does, I did in more, and if it doesn't, I move on. Still, the act of reading poetry sets me into a more contemplative and grounded space. In particular, I'm thinking a lot of about "Hope Is Not a Bird, Emily, It’s a Sewer Rat "by Caitlin Seida. You can read it in full here. Or you can find Caitlin's book of poetry on Bookshop or Amazon.

Talking with other people--not on social media but in person or virtually to learn how they are doing, what they are doing, and where they need support. Knowing that others are deeply grappling with how things have been has been really important. It reminds me that we're not alone in feeling or figuring this out; it's an inoculation against the virulent attempts to isolate and make us feel powerless. It's in these spaces that it feels important to acknowledge its hard and scary, to be vulnerable, and to recognize that connection and care is what always helps us in challenging times. 

Engaging with others is also having me think about what it means to be in community with other people, particularly those around me. I think about how while I have a rich and wide range of friends in my life, many are not connected. So there is no group but lots of individual relationships. That I have so many rich relationships is truly wonderful but with all that's going on, it makes me think about how to create a tapestry rather than individual threads. And, of course, leaning into community and focusing locally is not new. It's something that is often chipped away at through this version of capitalism (take your pick of names for this version of capitalism: surveillance, late-stage, techno-feudalist, etc). So trying to get more grounded in the people around me is something I'm trying to explore how and what that looks like. 

Priya Parker's latest newsletter also has me thinking about how to do this type of gathering and community gathering differently. As she notes later in the post:

"When the world is on fire, it can feel like the scale of action needed is simply beyond us. But authoritarian leaders know that gatherings have a way of catching, of shifting people’s sense of what’s possible, of revealing the next viable step."

I'm also trying to not get wrapped up in "not doing enough."  It's a refrain I can often have in and around this work--that it's all or nothing; if I'm not willing to toss aside all the connective elements that I see contributing to the problem, then it's not worth doing. The purity test of it all as it were. But the all or nothing thinking is also what eats away at us and keeps us from doing the things we can. 

So rather than not get bogged down and if it's too much or not, I'm trying to just focus on what I can do and when. Along those lines, I find that there are several organizations and newsletters that are helping me flex the muscles to do small work while I continue to figure out what is the bigger work to do. 

Americans of Conscience has a great weekly newsletter that identifies specific actions each week with specific scripts and contacts. They also include opportunities not to just complain but to thank and appreciate the work that is being done. Similarly, 5 Calls highlights 5 calls one can take each week to address issues that are happening at the national level. Meanwhile, Showing Up for Racial Justice has many local entities that do not just focus on the national issues but target specific issues and concerns in one's community or state. They can be a range of actions from rallies to letter writing to supporting local individuals and entities navigating complex issues. 

As challenging as these times are for folks both like me and very different from me is that it can feel very isolating or hard to figure out what to do. But the fact is, this isn't the first time this has happened--this kind of backlash domestically but also how individuals and communities respond to authoritative leadership. There's lots of playbooks and guidance out there that we can look to--some of them are even updated for us such as Indivisible's playbook.

Along those lines, I have another post coming after this--one that focuses specifically on higher education and what does it mean to navigate an administration that is not only hostile but seeks to undermine the foundations of democracy by doing away with any education that goes beyond training individuals (and yes, training is different than education are different approaches with different goals). 

And, of course, I realize that I might look at this post in 10 years and realize that my whole sense of things was out of proportion. I can remember being concerns about what and how George W. Bush was going to behave in the final years of his administration. Still, there's enough going on in just the past month (but really the last 10 years), that I feel like it's worth noting where I am because I know a lot of others are equally struggling (and may not realize it's just them). 

What about you, readers?  How are you making your way through this storm?

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