The Necessary Pain of Continuing to Be Shocked
And constantly resuscitating our broken hearts
“In a murderous time the heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking.”
It’s difficult to write about hope this week. I think it’s important to start there, because I don’t believe that the kind of hope that does any real good is easy or blind. It doesn’t rely on the ability to morph tragedy into silver linings. Rather, the gritty, pragmatic hope that I try to hold onto in these notes is a challenge to our internal resources. It isn’t simple faith in a better future, because the kind of hope that actually makes a difference requires our commitment to look upon harsh realities as they are and to work toward something better, even when the present feels very dark and full of fear—to work toward the belief that something better is always possible with effort and insistence. Hope requires that we allow ourselves to feel the sharp edges of all that is broken, and there is much that is shattered today.
I think the hardest part of remaining committed to hope is that it requires a constantly open heart—a willingness to look upon suffering and cruelty and refuse to allow it to numb your spirit. This is the only way we are able to see what work is needed and remain driven to do that work. But it is painful.
As I’ve written before, hope is not passive. At the most basic level, it is imperative to remember that hope is derived from a verb, which requires us, not to simply recognize the positive where it exists, but to bind ourselves to a better future and pull toward it:
Across its iterations in Old English, Greek, and Hebrew, hope is associated with expectation, trust, and faith…In Hebrew, the word for hope not only means expectation but also refers, literally, to a woven cord or rope meant for binding. It originates in a verb that means both to bind together and to wait. Hope in these terms is not fragile or superficial. It alludes to the task of holding fast to something and of remembering that we are always tethered to the future. And, with its root in a verb, it asks something active of us…Hope may be rooted in the notion of waiting, but it isn’t a passive form of waiting. We have to hold tight to the cord, understanding that what we are pulling ourselves toward may come tomorrow or it may be distant, but either way we are obliged to keep pulling.
In order for hope to be meaningful and effective, rather than blithely reassuring, we can’t rely on “reckless optimism,” nor can we surrender to “desperate fear,” as Hannah Arendt warned. Instead, we have to cling to a more honest and pragmatic disposition that reckons with the difficult realities of the present and nonetheless commits to continue the work of forging something better, out of our obligation to constantly dedicate ourselves to the future.
This form of hope can be wrenching to sustain during periods of great harm, because it requires that we look honestly at the dangers and suffering that exist and refuse to become numb to them. And this involves allowing our hearts to break again and again, because if our hearts don’t break every time we are witness to brutality, we risk disconnecting from our own humanity and from each other. And this disconnection unravels the essential binding force of hope, as our ties to one another fray.
In a 1998 interview, Toni Morrison reflected upon examples of extreme brutality toward Black children during school integration in the Civil Rights Movement. In particular, she described incidents of white mothers overturning school buses of Black children. Despite the sad frequency of such unconscionable actions, she explained the importance of never becoming inured to them. She said,
“It is always shocking. It’s always shocking. And I insist on being shocked. I’m never going to become immune. I think that’s a kind of failure, to see so much of it that you die inside. I want to be surprised and shocked every time.”
This past week was a week of brutality, much of which was directed at children. From children terrified to go to school in the face of potential ICE raids, as more than 20 children were deported to Colombia under the false guise of criminality, to a Senator arguing for whipping children with belts instead of providing medication for learning differences, to trans children being denied both medical care and acknowledgment of their existence with threats to jail their teachers, to starving children in countries around the world being cut off from humanitarian aid—it was a barbaric week for many, but especially for children.
In all of this, there were glimmers of good. Multiple school systems publicly rejected illegal orders that would cause direct harm to children and impede federally protected curricular freedom. Foreign aid workers chose to forge ahead with protecting children’s lives for as long as possible, despite the loss of vital resources. Federal employees, researchers, and common citizens feverishly downloaded and archived critical data from public websites before they were purged of essential and in some cases life saving information. These glimmers are important, and I will return to them below. But first it feels essential to acknowledge the reality that this was a week of being split open repeatedly by cruelty, as the most vulnerable were villainized and punished for their mere existence. We cannot move forward in any productive way, or hold onto our humanity, compassion, and dignity without acknowledging this.
As one malaria scientist said of the freeze on humanitarian aid this week, “You could open the funding floodgates again tomorrow and you will still have children dying months from now because of this pause.” Even as we move forward, such losses demand our recognition and mourning.
“The heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking.”
When we no longer feel shocked and heartbroken at these events, we risk acquiescing to them. And so, in moments like this, I try to remind myself to feel grateful for a heart that is still capable of breaking, and I hold fast to Toni Morrison’s warning that we must always continue to be shocked. I also take comfort in seeing others whose hearts are broken, because this means the pulse of human care, connection, and community is not yet so sedated into despair and defeat that we cannot even grieve for one another.
Those other broken hearts are essential to hope and are the reason to keep moving forward. They are the aid workers who chose children’s lives over federal compliance and the teachers who committed to barricade their doors from anyone threatening their students physical or emotional safety, be it an ICE agent or an active shooter. We can find hope in binding ourselves to their compassion and bravery.
And here is where the glimmers become vital. Hope requires that, in addition to looking honestly at all that is broken, we also acknowledge the good where we find it, because these sparks, however small, are the reminder that we still belong to one another and that it is still possible to care for each other and build toward something better. To acknowledge these sparks of good is not naive. They are the electric pulse that resuscitates our shocked and broken hearts so we may live to fight another day.
And this is not just about emotional sustenance. It is deeply practical. It takes a surprisingly small percentage of society working ardently for a better future to make that future a reality. The research of Erica Chenoweth indicates that, in most modern examples, autocracy cannot withstand the force of 3.5% of the population mobilizing against it in non-violent resistance, at the peak of a movement. While Chenoweth notes that this is not a guarantee of future success, it is startling to consider that such a relatively small percentage of the population has demonstrable power to reorient the social order away from authoritarian rule.
While a seemingly small percentage, 3.5% of the population still represents a significant movement. For perspective, Chenoweth notes that the January, 2017 Women’s March, which was the largest single day demonstration in US history involving over 4 million people, comprised only 1-1.6% of the total US population across hundreds of locations. 3.5% of the population would entail active engagement from over 11 million people. Nonetheless, this points to the significance of holding onto the examples of those struggling against forces that feel unimaginably powerful and joining their efforts whenever possible.
It is also significant, in considering our own power, to be reminded that it is rarely elected officials who lead these large scale movements. It is much more common for cautious public officials to be pushed to action by the rising collective voice of citizens than the reverse. So, while it is surely disheartening that the response of elected officials to this week’s deluge of damaging and illegal orders was, for the most part, alarmingly meek and impotent, history tells us that it is citizens who have the most power to move leaders and spur them to action, not political officials rallying the people. The work of the future is ours.
Historian Matthew Gabriele recently said the following in response to a question about how he finds hope in the past:
“Sometimes [history] seems like nothing but bad decisions. But in every case, there was another path, another choice that could’ve been made. For everyone counseling violence, there were others speaking truth to power, counseling justice and mercy and compromise and reconciliation. We tend, I think, too often to think of hope as the same as optimism, but it isn’t. Things aren’t inevitable - they won’t necessarily get better, but neither will they necessarily get worse. We were never somehow ‘meant’ to get to our present moment and things always could’ve been otherwise. Hope is about possibility; it requires people to do things, even in the face of it all falling apart. And history is filled with people doing things to make the world better, even if they sometimes fail. But then others dust themselves off and try again. History is, at its core, about hope.”
No moment in history is ever final, and no power is ever truly absolute, as long as we refuse to become numb, as long as we continue to allow our hearts to break for one another, and as long as we use that heartbreak as fuel to do everything we can to protect one another.
Wishing you the capacity to remain shocked and the courage to mend your broken heart and continue to forge ahead,
Alicia
P.S. A living reminder that we can do impossible things. (Sound on. Nature helps us heal and so does music.)
Glimmers to amplify and join forces with…
NYC DOE reaffirmed the city’s schools as welcoming to all students.
CA DOE reaffirmed curricular authority of public schools and teachers.
School systems across the country refused to comply with illegal anti-trans order.
ASU student protesters overwhelmed an anti-immigrant event sponsored by a student group with ties to white nationalism.
“They chose the children.” Aid workers chose to keep children alive despite the freeze on their organizations.
Oregon Health & Science University refused to pause gender affirming care.
Federal workers, researchers, journalists, and graduate students rushed to back up essential data as critical websites were purged.
“A sea of lights.” Tens of thousands protested the AfD in Germany.
Students in Serbia have been protesting government incompetence for months.
Organizations to follow if you’re not sure what to do and need guidance on simple starting points…
Indivisible provides direction on ongoing concrete actions
5 Calls directs daily calls to representatives
And finally, a reminder that the world is big, and we can’t lose sight of the positive progress we’ve already made, because this is the evidence that working for the future still matters.
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