Lance Phillips • December 03, 2024
Engaging with the world only in the way you want it to be is misguided, heartbreaking, and dangerous. I’m going to do my best to weave together three disparate things, all of which speak to acknowledging what is in front of you as a means to plotting a path forward.
Too often we move in a direction that seems like it’s forward when in fact we’re not moving at all. We can’t or won’t see the consequences of the events around us. We can’t or won’t accept that reality is complex and made more complex with the intention of stultifying the average person with worry. I understand that concern about basic needs is real; that it is the utmost priority. I am also convinced that making ourselves aware of the hows and whys of inequity, and injustice, and exploitative policies, and all the positions that remove power from everyday people, especially “the people on the edge of the night” as David Bowie so succinctly put in “Under Pressure”…is the only way forward.
Bear with me, please. I want to tell you a few stories – each of which will, I hope, dare you to embrace love’s empowering work, or as Bowie puts it:
“And love dares you to care for / the people on the edge of the night”.
Care requires time and time requires space. Making space to come to terms with the current political climate, as onerous as it may be, or any challenging set of circumstances, is the first step to overcoming it.
STORY # 1
When I was in my early 20s, I read Robert Fitzgerald’s translation of Virgil’s The Aeneid. For the subsequent 30 years these lines have stuck with me as a kind talisman, both against the slights of the world, and as a reminder of how events, objects, and narratives contribute to the reality of the world:
“They weep here / For how the world goes, and our life that passes / Touches their hearts.”
Aeneas exclaims this after he and his men come ashore at Carthage (Northern Africa) and he sees a mural depicting their plight after the Trojan War. Virgil’s point is that it’s ok to be affected by what happens in the world. In fact, it is necessary to feel the stings the world often offers so that the path moving forward can attempt to avoid them. Virgil’s call is to make space for the way things are in any given moment.
STORY # 2
On January 17, 1991, I was 20 years old, for all of two months. I was in my first creative writing class and I was a junior in college. If you don’t remember what happened on January 17, 1991, let me quickly remind you. After about five months of amassing troops, saber-rattling, and controlling the narrative of what was happening on the Arabian Peninsula, U.S and coalition forces started an aerial bombardment of Iraq. The U.S was at war right out there in the open. My creative writing teacher realized the weight of these events and gave up her class time to having an open discussion about the events. As she said, “It’s not everyday you wake up and your country’s at war.” While there certainly wasn’t agreement in that class room, without exception we all appreciated the space we had been given to engage in a public display of emotion.
STORY # 3
On the morning after the presidential election of 2024, I was meant to teach a college-level course to high school students. It seemed important to give them the space they needed to process their emotions about an election that will, no doubt, impact their entire lives. I gave them a quarter of the class to write down their thoughts. I wanted to give them space to consider the reality of the world at that moment. They rose to the occasion. They wrote silently for 20 minutes. I watched their faces change as they wrote. I watched them make connections and watched the beginnings of paths forward for them.
The Path Forward
We all need space to think, to process, to feel the weight of any given moment. Sometimes those moments are heavier than others, but they are all moments. Give yourself time to feel how events, objects, and expectations conspire to tell your story, or the story of those around you. Our narratives are not static. We can change what’s coming but to do that we have to see what’s already happened and understand why.
RESOURCES
The tears of things: Heaney, Virgil, Frost | anenduringromantic
The Aeneid by Virgil: 9780679413356 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books
The Internet Classics Archive | The Aeneid by Virgil
Under Pressure: Karen O & Willie Nelson version of the song
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