What I will tell my children

Doing my bit for democracy. October 2024.
 
"[Name], life is hectic. Make a plan to vote, and vote early if you can. Scan the QR code below to check out your options ..."

I wrote this short message 100 times this past week on colorful postcards for MomsRising. I wrote the notes in snatched moments after dinner, during bedtime, in the still hours before my own sleep. I wrote them amid kid tantrums raging and my spouse's fever spiking. I wrote them as a small, desperate addition to the swirling maelstrom of history, in recognition that one single event rarely changes everything the way that many small actions, accumulated and reverberating, can.

This perspective has been a long time coming for me. The 2016 election forced me to question everything I knew about my own values and everything I believed about my own capacity for compassion, fear, hope, and radical reorientation. Then in 2018, on the brink of first-time motherhood and midterm elections, I wrote a reflection titled "What will I tell my child?", in which I bemoaned what I saw as my lack of participation in the fight for social justice.

I was waking up to our world's interconnected systems but didn't yet know where I could best plug in, and instead of exploring this new terrain with curiosity and self-compassion, I instead shut down when facing the enormity of the problems. I mean, come on ... how overwrought is this?

"Will I look my child in the eye and tell them with full faith and great pride that good women and men stood up to combat the abject wrong? Better yet, will I be able to count myself among that group?"

Six years and two children later, I have cursed, wailed, tuned in, zoned out, tried many tactics and abandoned nearly all of them, all with a growing awareness of history's most vital element—that the only element I control is myself, and I can choose what steps I take toward the future I want.

As such, I feel gentler toward my tender, younger self, as well as more clear-eyed. I see how black and white my thinking was, that I would stand up once with the "good men and women" and be set from there on out. The thing I have learned is that the fate of the world doesn't hang on one moment, one choice, from little old me. Rather, many moments from many people zing and collide, and the specifics of one's choice can matter less than the act of choosing itself.

With this tighter framing in mind, I am enduring this year's election cycle with bone-deep exhaustion and grim determination. My exhaustion feels like an individual luxury, something a secure, white, upper-middle-class citizen can permit herself to feel. But my grim determination reflects a commitment to the collective, a desire to soften the edges of my own tiny square and overlap more tightly with others in order to reshape our world.

In fact, I feel more equipped now to answer the question I posed in 2018. What I'll tell my children when they're old enough to comprehend (and model for them in the meantime) is this:

Right now, as of Sunday, I wrote and mailed 100 postcards. I opted to do it through an organization that addressed and stamped them in advance because my time and mental energy are limited in this season of life, and I decided that doing something small was better than doing nothing at all. I have no idea if the effort will make any difference. On their own, 100 postcards won't sway the outcome of the presidential election. But I like to think that one, maybe even two or three of those notes will remind a fellow stressed citizen that their voice matters. That they can choose to exercise their right to vote. That they can opt for "easier" or "simple" and still have it count.

I will tell my children: We are not called to throw ourselves on the pyre of history. We are called to participate in writing the future.

Prayer #403: One Syllable at a Time

I
search for
a single
action, word, prayer
that absolves me of
responsibility
to grow, to change, to evolve,
to fall spectacularly flat
in my human (but sincere!) efforts
to save the world, but now it dawns on me
the only "single" thing to elevate is
love.

Amen.