I’ve been feeling really quite depressed about the world for the last few months, years . . . awhiles. There are a lot of really, really bad things happening. Everywhere. Everything. All at once. To Everyone. That movie just keeps making more, and more sense. 

Maybe the world has always been this complex and awful and now we just have more instant and compounded exposure to it. Maybe media consumption is the modern day equivalent of taking the red pill (am I mixing movie metaphors here? Yes, yes I am. Bear with me). Maybe our empathy deficit/gap has simply grown too big. We have created too many narcissists. We have become so overwhelmed by all that is wrong that to survive, we turn the world off. 

I get it. I feel it. It is heavy.

We have two choices, really. One, blue pill. Self, not collective, preservation wins. Which, ironically of course, means we all lose. Or, two, red pill, and in absolutely no way do I mean vote Republican. Not that kind of red pill. I am going back to my Matrix moment and sticking with it, for now. I mean we choose not to look away, and we do something about what we see. 

We cannot change things we do not acknowledge. Not habits, not behavior, not systems, not communities, not outcomes. We have to accept what is, before it becomes what is next. Is that a movie line? It must be. Or a book. A speech maybe. Certainly someone will tell me. Google?

Anyway, so what? Where? With whom? Knowing we need to change something is different than having the agency and capacity to do it. 

So really? Where? With whom? 

Start with your spheres of influence, the experts say. Do what you can where you can with the people around you. Start with what’s working and grow from there. Carry the torch a little bit further down the path and hand it off to the next team. If everybody does something small then together we do the big things, right? There are definitely some more movie moments I am neglecting here, but you get my point. 

Nothing I have written here is a new idea. People much wiser, experienced, and closer to the work than me have been saying this all (sweeps hands broadly side-to-side and up and down) for generations. 

But I needed a reminder. Maybe you did too. 

This afternoon I was able to attend a kick-off campaign for my friend, Dr.Colette Harris-Matthews and was reinvigorated and re-focused. I felt inspired again. People like Dr. Harris-Mathhews and Dr.Flo make me, to emphasize the latter’s campaign slogan, believe that more is (actually) possible. 

Colette is running for a trustee seat on the Los Rios Community College District Board, a district in which she worked for many years. She is dedicated, experienced, wise, and kind. She holds deep value in designing with community (of which she is a member), grounds her work in equity, and like me, believes that a central way to change our systems is to change our policies. 

I fundamentally believe that if we want a different outcome we need a different system, and that policy serves either to bind, or liberate our ability to create and sustain those systems. This is largely why I wanted to study at NYU- I wanted to know what else I could do to help change the system. And, this is what Dr. Harris-Matthews wants to do- co-create policies that support equitable systems. Remember what I wrote about supportive context? This is what I mean. Again. New context, same requirement. 

Today, listening to her speak to a small group of community college students and faculty, I was reminded of how much I enjoy community organizing and physically being a part of movements. For the last few years I’ve moved the bulk of my social and racial justice work to something I can do from home. First out of necessity and then frankly, out of habit and capacity. I contribute what I can to campaigns, make phone calls, write emails to my legislators, and repost on social media. I’ve started writing again. But I was reminded today of how very important it is to be together with people doing the work. 

I think sometimes of the irony of losing sight of humanity when all we have are pictures of each other. It’s infinitely easier to accept or reject ideas, and the people who have them, when we only view them in our hands. 

Energy, and empathy, it often seems, don’t transmit well over broadband. 

Human to human conversations are powerful. We need to see and hear each other. Yes, keep doing what you can and where you can. Please keep going. You and your work are important. But do it with people, if and in whatever way you can. 

And do I have the answer to where, when and with whom? I do not. But I do have a renewed commitment to keep trying, and I do have a renewed commitment to ask you to keep trying with me. I won’t get myopic if you don’t. I mean, I will, because – age – but like, metaphorically? Yeah, no. We got this. Let’s go.