Staying Steady in Unsteady Times
And not mistaking mile markers for finish lines
Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign, the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.
When my son was little, there was a character in a cartoon he sometimes watched whose main trait was a tendency to wave his hands in the air and scream, “We’re all gonna die!” with big, frantic eyes at every unexpected turn of events. As is often the case with cartoons, he accurately reflects one aspect of lived experience, even in his exaggerated simplicity—a voice that most of us probably hear within ourselves from time to time, just as we also have the capacity to draw upon calmer, more reasoned voices. Over the last few weeks, the big eyes and panicked exclamations of this cartoon have been playing on a loop in my mind like a personal mental gif. I’m not sure if he’s the face of my own panic or my brain’s attempt to bring a little absurdity and humor to stressful times. Probably both.
As the anticipation of the early dawn rays of November 5th, beginning to stretch above the horizon line this week, grows, it feels as if we are teetering along a precipice that we have been edging closer and closer to for three presidential election cycles and nearly a decade. As each election seems to grow more existential and dire, it has become harder to quiet the most frantic inner voices. And I actually believe that those frantic voices have their place. There is a reason fire alarms are startlingly, painfully loud. Sometimes we need to be jolted into action. But once we’ve registered the danger, the alarm is no longer useful, and we have to try to find other voices to ground us—not voices that offer false reassurance and lull us back into complacency, but voices that help us to move forward.
For a variety of reasons over the past ten years, both personal and political, I’ve needed to learn how to attend to the alarms when they ring out, and then quiet them and keep moving forward with as much calm and purpose as I can manage. Through the repetition of this pattern, I’ve learned that the key is not to focus on a perceived finish line, but to remember that there is no finish line.
On the surface, this may seem like a pessimistic or fatalistic approach. But I don’t see it that way. When we view any one moment, no matter how critical, as an endpoint, we set ourselves up for hopelessness in the event of a defeat and complacency in the event of a win, and both of those outcomes can lead only to the next existential moment. Instead, the work of both political progress and personal mental fortitude lies, I think, in the ability to commit to mile marker after mile marker along a road that will always stretch far behind us and far ahead.
Playwright, Heidi Schreck, describes progress through the metaphor of a woman and dog walking along a beach. She says,
“If you watch the dog, it keeps running ahead and then running backwards, so that, if you only keep your eye on the dog, it seems like progress is constantly being undone. But if you watch the woman, you can see that she is moving steadily forward and forward and forward.”
The journey doesn’t always feel as peaceful as this metaphor implies (which Schreck also does not suggest—watch her spectacular, necessary, biting, and deeply relevant play). But it is an important reminder that we can’t be distracted from the larger work by the bursts and setbacks of wins or losses, even when they are significant.
It’s also a reminder to watch the women. Always watch the women. In particular, watch Black women, who have consistently been the ones to move us forward with the most fortitude, against the greatest odds.
One of Harris’s campaign phrases has been, “the first but not the last.” It would be easy to hear this as a rallying cry to break a barrier so that others may flood through behind. But, if we pay close attention to the progress of rights, I think this line is more a reminder that, even when a barrier is broken down, we have to keep working to prevent it from being reinforced and re-cemented, because backlash is always the reaction of established power under threat.
In July, when the presidential race was suddenly and massively realigned, and there was a surge of energy and hope, as well as anxiety and caution, I wrote a reminder that the origin of the word hope is not the same as blind optimism. Rather, hope derives from the concept of a cord that binds us to the future and that we have to constantly struggle to hold tightly with both faith and fortitude.
“Hope is a commitment to struggle against our own passivity, to adjust our outlooks to the demands of the moment, to hold onto the cord and keep pulling ourselves forward. Hope isn’t meant to be a balm. It is the necessary fuel that prevents us from acquiescing to sleep in order to protect our hearts from the turbulence of a fraught journey. It propels us forward while also providing the patience that prevents us from turning back at every setback.”
As absurd as it is, the cartoon lemur screaming, “We’re all gonna die,” in my mind is not actually a flip or hyperbolic sentiment, despite its silly, comical packaging. It is a reminder, in the best tradition of fools and clowns, that darkness always lurks just around the corner, even as most people go about their day-to-day lives and brush aside dire warnings as hysteria.
Last week a friend texted me and one other friend to let us know that he’d made us back-up executors in his will in case his marriage is invalidated in the potentially dystopian future that feels far too possible and close at hand. Other friends from different but equally vulnerable demographics have mentioned over the past six months that they’re exploring moving out of the country—not in the glib way that often reflects a performative, hollow protest, but rather with full sincerity and consideration, knowing that their safety and that of their families might be at risk, depending on the outcome of this election.
The seriousness of what is at stake is very real. And, as we acknowledge this and work fervently to hold the barricades with our votes, we must also continue to learn from the voices in our midst that have been fighting for recognition and progress for centuries, understanding that there is no finish line—that there will still be work to do no matter what. And, as Holocaust survivor Elizabeth Bellak reminds us, we must always remain on guard against the ease with which we can slip backward.
No matter how bleak and frightening, or how bright and optimistic, any one moment may feel, I find some measure of steadiness in this—in reminding myself that there will still be work to do no matter what happens. I don’t view this only as a way of reminding myself that we can’t afford to accept a possible, and in many ways legitimately terrifying, defeat as the final say, should that come to pass. Reminding myself that there will always be more work ahead is also a way of staying attuned to the fact that an equally possible victory won’t grant permission to desist from all that still needs to be repaired.
Nor is this perspective a way of convincing myself that the outcomes of elections, and particularly of this one, don’t matter. Far from it. The work ahead and the goals we will be able to focus on will be starkly and harrowingly different depending on the outcome.
But the world is never wholly won or wholly lost, and the moment we think it is we stop moving forward, whether because we’ve declared victory or resigned ourselves to defeat. We still need to continue no matter what, and I find strength, not exhaustion, in this. I think it is the very definition and the very active function of hope.
As Maya Angelou described, this capacity for continuing is where “the nobleness of the human spirit” abides—in our ability and our commitment to rise and rise and rise again, whether we have fear or joy in our hearts, not because we are naive, but because we recognize how essential it is to keep going when the wind is at our back and when the wind is pushing us back.
In 2021, Amanda Gorman opened her inaugural poem with these words,
“When day comes, we ask ourselves: Where can we find light In this neverending shade? The loss we carry, a sea we must wade.We’ve braved the belly of the beast. We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace, And the norms and notions of what ‘just is’ Isn’t always justice.And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it. Somehow, we do it. Somehow, we’ve weathered and witnessed A nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.”
We are forever unfinished.
So we commit to the mile marker ahead and vote. And we commit to all the days after that, whatever they may hold. As Kyle “Guante” Tran Myhre says, this is, “The ‘right now’ work of elections, and the ‘all-the-time’ work of movement-building.”
My favorite lines in Gorman’s poem are these,
“Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true: That even as we grieved, we grew, That even as we hurt, we hoped, That even as we tired, we tried.”
Vote. And then keep moving.
In hope,
Alicia
P.S. If you’re interested in more pre-election reading that centers the work of hope without the adrenaline ride that is polling data, or if you know someone who could use a little grounding ahead of Tuesday, here are the other notes I’ve written that touch on the election.
Lessons in Leadership
Raising Citizens
Why Hope Can Feel Risky
We Shouldn’t Need to Be Heroes
Valuing an Open Heart
Take Your Children into the Voting Booth
It’s always easier to hold onto hope when we’re not doing it alone.
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