There is always something more to fear.
This is a lesson we never seem to learn.
For the rest of the world, today will be a day of import, one that will quite literally chart that world’s course for years to come, perhaps for whole generations. We do not expect it that it will be the one characterized by bravery and generosity of spirit, the one that actually is aimed at securing a better world for those future generations. That’s not how colonial cultures function.
And on this day, there is absolutely nothing that we can do to change that course from here.
I have been struck, in recent weeks, by the blind faith found in some quarters, and the equally blind hope, that someone will “do something” to avert disaster. I have been equally struck by the fear that accompanies it: It is a palpable thing, primal, one that gives off the stench of self-centered desperation, unable to see past its own immediate terror. It’s a terror born of a life of and rooted firmly in relative privilege.
If only . . . . If only . . . .
No.
One thing our peoples know, and know well, at the ancestral level of blood and bone and spirit, is that there is always something more to fear. Once it was the elements, and creatures larger than ourselves and just as predatory. Then it was others like us, lighter-skinned, who came from a far-off land with weapons of war and a bound bit of paper that was their pretext for taking the land, the language, the lives. Then it was technology, the Iron Horse and the Interstate, the dams and the mines and the damnable pipelines.
And now, in addition to all of those things, it’s the smaller, more immediate forms of loss: of job, of health, of material amenities, of status.
It seems more forbidding now, of course: The shortest light, the longest night, is but two days away. Here, temperatures are already dipping a toe beneath the zero line, an early dalliance with the mercury’s negatives. There are many more long months of bitter cold ahead, and the chances are far better than not that this year, we will not be warmed by the fires of a politics of studied policy and dedicated service. People stand to lose much that has made their lives easier, from jobs to health care to clean water to peace of mind.
But some of us remember other times, times when those most angry now think the world was easier, but when in fact for our peoples, and too many others forced to the margins, existence was little more than camping out on the cliff’s edge. Nothing was secure, nothing was promised, not even the next day . . . and yet, we are here, and so resistance succeeded.
We are still in the early years of this new century, and we have all adjusted too fast and too thoroughly to the comforts and conveniences of post-modern life, put too much faith in technology to save us rather than finding within our spirits the ability to save ourselves. We may no longer (mostly) fear the wolf at the door or the darker creatures in the woods; now we fear not being able to make the car payment, losing the house, contracting an illness, not being able to afford health care. They are all things worth fearing, and yet, when one has lost them all, and more, one learns that there are still things left to fear.
It is the way of humanity, our essential infirmity.
Fear can coax the worst from us, or it can inspire us to a better way. The former is the path of least resistance, always the easiest road to take. It’s how we got here in the first place. And those who mouth the platitudes of resistance would do well to examine their own hearts, because the worst of humanity’s collective behaviors have too often begun as, and been justified by, alleged allegiance to resistance. That’s how this “country,” such as it is, was birthed. The blood of our ancestors bears witness to that simple fact.
For this day, the world is caught in a holding pattern, a shaky stasis, waiting, waiting. Waiting to see what course will be charted at day’s end. Waiting to see which triumphs, resentment or resilience, fear or hope. It’s too much to ask for love, but hope will do.
And if we are denied, what then?
We will resume waiting, through the cold dark days of winter, waiting to see just how bad it will be.
Waiting for the light.
But the light is already here.
Oh, its hours are numbered few and short, its angle low and sharp. but it returns, all the same.
Where there is light, there is hope, however dim and small.
For now, we see the shadows, we fear the dark. But the dark cows us into submission, into keeping our heads low and hoping we go unnoticed, into hoarding that which we can yet call ours and refusing the outstretched hands of those whose straits are more dire.
It is time to stand up, step forward, resist. It is time to live lives of bravery even as the shadows encroach, lives of generosity even as the cold cuts deep.
It is time to step into the light.
~ Aji
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