Don 39;t Look Away 2017
Zoraida Shular
If you have the time to spend 30 minutes fighting with a rando on Instagram about military policy, redirect that time into contacting your Member of Congress, who has a wee bit more say in such things.
I feel compelled to bear witness. But I also must take care of myself. Especially if you have people who need you. Even a relative in Israel is keeping up her and her village's spirits. Strong friend groups (esp women friends) can be so healing. Take care of yourself and your family.?
So many of us, so many of the caring and big-hearted people I know, are having similar conversations. We\u2019re grappling with how to align our actions with our feelings, at such a fraught time. We are struggling to figure out what is helpful, what hurtful, what is \u201Cour lane.\u201D
Let\u2019s be frank: we ordinary, non-experts in geopolitics are trying to determine what is \u201Cacceptable\u201D to say and do publicly during an incredibly horrific time, when everyone is extremely sensitive (with good reason) \u2014 and that\u2019s a really weird place to be.
So forgive my longer-than-intended absence from my Substack, but I\u2019ve been struggling too. I have felt a little stuck in my own ping-pong tournament of a brain, and let me assure you\u2014that\u2019s not nearly as fun a place as it might sound.
I stepped away from writing here for a bit while attempting to extract myself from the guilt of it. (I feel very accountable to you all!) I\u2019ve thrown myself into some work I\u2019m loving, into my family\u2019s needs, movie nights, kid activities, making the phone calls and catching up with old friends. And yes, posting on Instagram and Threads here and there. But not all day, every day.
I see a lot of people internalizing that idea, confessing that right now, more than ever, it feels wrong to turn off the TV or put down phones. That it feels insensitive (or looks insensitive?) because people at war right now don\u2019t have the privilege to look away or take breaks.
Here I will remind you that if you think about privilege at all in the first place, it\u2019s a decent indicator that you\u2019re not exactly sticking your head in the sand, refusing to let your carefree life of leisure be interrupted.
Watching the same tragic footage over and over is not helping a single person in need. It\u2019s not creating conditions for peace, it\u2019s not bringing home hostages, it\u2019s not ridding the world of terrorism, it\u2019s not stopping a single bomb, it\u2019s not supporting people in crisis, it\u2019s not slowing the chilling rise in anti-Semitism, it\u2019s not building more affordable housing, it\u2019s not closing the pay gap, it\u2019s not getting out the vote for sensible candidates, it\u2019s not putting more kindness into the world.
If you know me, you know I believe in the importance of bearing witness; but I am sincerely concerned that we are conflating \u201Cbearing witness\u201D with the incessant consumption of nightmarish images of man\u2019s worst inhumanity to man.
(Like how about serving smaller portions and giving your grocery savings to a nonprofit? Ever think of that, black-and-white TV parents? Call me, show runners. I\u2019ve got more where that came from.)
If you struggle with the \u201Cprivilege\u201D of taking a break from the news, please allow me to share with you what smarter people than I suggest that activists (and other caring people) do during these times:
We understand that rest is political. That it is a resource that replenishes us, supports us to transition from surviving to thriving, and enables us to honour our movements and ourselves\u2026Rest is an act of centring one\u2019s wellbeing. It is a radical intentional act of ensuring our physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional wellness.
-Lucky Kobugabe and Nxumalo-De Smidt of CoFem
Take time to breathe, restore, and heal \u2026cultivate joy and find support in the friendships that feel and mirror transformation. The work is here and you don\u2019t have to run yourself in the ground. We can do this work from a sustainable place.\u201D
- Patrisse Cullors to Teen Vogue
Let's face it, we don't get into activism because things are great\u2026Joy is how we gather the energy to go back in, to do the work. Joy is how we remind ourselves what we're fighting for.
- Karen Walrond to NPR about her book, The Lightmaker\u2019s Manifesto: How to Work for Change Without Losing Your Joy
Speak out against bigotry, dehumanization, and threats directed at minority groups that are not your own, and to call out hate when you see it\u2014whether it\u2019s online, at a PTA meeting, or at your own Thanksgiving table\u2014because that is truly meaningful action. (And as someone who falls into one of those minority groups, I thank you personally.)
Or as I wrote here (in a far less quotable way): allowing yourself to rest or play or experience joy is not a sign you don\u2019t care. It\u2019s a sign that you that you do care\u2014enough to keep yourself healthy and whole for yourself, and for those who rely on you.
We always talk about being kind. Let\u2019s not forget to be kind to ourselves.
Evaporation ponds that are pinkish-red due to high salinity levels are visible on the north section of the Great Salt Lake in August 2021 near Corinne, Utah. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images hide caption
For me, it's Teton County. That stretch of high plains and higher mountains that extends from the southeastern most corner of Idaho and into Wyoming. I've spent a lifetime watching the sun rise and set over the Teton mountains. But a couple of summers ago, I watched those same sunrises and sunsets with dread.
The experts call this "climate grief." I wanted to understand what this felt like to someone who has spent their life writing and thinking about our psychic and spiritual connection to the natural world. Terry Tempest Williams immediately came to mind. I first interviewed Williams 25 years ago at a writer's retreat in Yosemite National Park and I've never forgotten that conversation and the reverence with which she talked about the forests, the mountains, the air, the birds.
Rachel Martin: You and I are from the same part of the world. You're from Utah, many generations. I was actually born in Salt Lake City and anytime I would go home to Southeast Idaho, I had to either drive by or fly over the Great Salt Lake.
For me, that place was always a mystery because as a kid, I didn't really understand why there was this big, beautiful, colorful lake and we couldn't go swimming in it and we couldn't play in the sand along the shore. It seemed sort of scary and confusing to me. How did it sit in your consciousness growing up?
Terry Tempest Williams: Oh, I think very much the same early on. My parents hated it, you know, there was the obligatory one time where my mother and aunt took a station wagon full of kids, my cousins and brothers and I, and they sat in their chairs very elegantly on the shore quite a ways away.
And we ran in just thrilled, thinking, "Oh, this is our ocean!" And after the impact of going too far in, we all started screaming because kids have, you know, cuts and scratches on their legs. And it was just so salty that it hurt. Then we ran back in and as kids do, and we pushed each other in.
And when we left I just remember we were all stuck to the seats. We'd been pickled and dried, we looked like little crystals. And I never went back again until much later. And fell in love with it because of the birds that surrounded the lake.
Williams: I remember going out there with my husband, Brooke Williams, when we were courting, because I wanted him to love what I loved. Then Great Salt Lake started to rise in the early '80s, around 1983. And that piqued my attention because I wondered what was going to happen to the birds. And I must've gone out every week until the high water.
During that time, my mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. And so the lake, the rise, the demise of the birds, my mother's illness all became inextricably linked. I'm 68 years old. I've seen Great Salt Lake at its historic high 4,212 feet above sea level. And now, at its historic low, which was last November at 4,188 feet.
As my mother was dying, she became more her essence, and in my mind became more beautiful. I feel like the Great Salt Lake is showing us her essence too, and it is so stark and so bare, it's haunting.
Williams: We can now stand in the lake bed where water once was. I mean, there was a moment where you couldn't go to Antelope Island, an island in the middle of the lake, for many, many years, for a decade, because the water covered the causeway. Now you walk out to Antelope Island and it looks like a stretched buckskin. There is no water. The birds are still there, but the numbers are lower.
This year has been a series of dates for me. I'll never forget January 5th when the Brigham Young University report came out on Great Salt Lake. Shocked all of us that Great Salt Lake, if we did nothing as citizens, would disappear, die in five years.
And then another date for me was June 29th when the headlines of the Salt Lake Tribune were that the white pelicans were gone. This is a bird of 30 million years of perfection. It was at Lake Lahontan with fossil records 12,500 years ago.
In March, they counted 5,000 white pelicans. The first part of June, 1,000. Around June 29th, all of the breeding pairs were gone, leaving only a few remnant juveniles hiding behind rock formations. They're gone. What do the pelicans know that we don't? So it continues to be a haunting.
Williams: It's still so beautiful. I mean, I just flew over it last night, coming home to Utah. The water yesterday morning was turquoise. It's brilliant. There's a clarity of light that is breathtaking. It's never not been beautiful.
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