One Year Later...

For three weeks I’ve been trying to write something about the anniversary of DJT’s election. Trying and failing. As is always the case when something is hard to write, the problem is that I don’t know what I want to say.

One thing I know I want to do is note, mark, recount how I felt a year ago. It was a kind of despair that I haven’t experienced before. I don't say that lightly - I have had a lifelong struggle with depression, I have experienced deep disappointment and challenges in life. But this past  year has been different. 

A year ago, I felt deeply fearful for myself, personally – for the safety of any people who engage in systematic dissent when an authoritarian is in power. I felt deeply fearful for the progressive movement. I felt personal concern for the immigrant and people of color communities that I knew would be targeted. I felt very concerned for people who relied on Obamacare for lifesaving health care, with so many pledges for immediate repeal floating around. I thought of people with cancer and other life threatening diseases who might suddenly find themselves with massive pre-existing condition and no health care.

I can say all of those things, and they’re all true. But they really don’t speak to how I actually felt.

The day after the election I told a friend that I felt like the world was ending.

The week after the election, someone asked how I was, and I laughed and said, “Well I haven’t jumped off a building yet.” Another day, I responded to the same question by saying, “I wake up everyday in despair and hope that by the end of the day I can work my way up to depression.”

Two weeks after the election, I went to visit family for Thanksgiving. I could barely participate in the merriment, prone to big sighs and lots of beer to take my mind off the state of affairs. One of my family members scoffed when I expressed worry about the progressive left being criminalized – that we generally and I specifically might get detained for opposition activity. But another friend affirmed my fears. It was very confusing but nothing felt reassuring.

Three weeks after the election, I went back to teaching yoga, having taken off two months to work on getting out the vote. I almost cried in my first class – that feeling of being part of a community was almost too much. I felt that I had to explain why I was teaching what I was teaching. That basically I was using yoga to cope and that my students, for better and worse, would be learning from my efforts. I remember thinking that maybe some of them felt as bereft and loss as I, but even if they weren’t, probably at some point in their lives they would. And so the lessons of how to use yoga to cope might stay with them, and help them work through their darkest moments.

Many of the days the followed, and inauguration day in particular, I felt like I was attending a funeral. The attacks started right away and they kept coming.

And yet. And yet. And yet. So much beauty in the response. So many people standing up for the ideals of democracy and justice. Crowds gathering at airports. Undocumented people staging hunger strikes. Wheelchair-bound people lying on the floor in the halls of Congress. Park rangers and climate scientists saving data, tweeting out critiques of the new proposals.

 Protest after protest after protest.

And my own awakenings, the sources of strength we don't know we have. Inspired by the need to be at my best physically, I gave up drinking alcohol and I've never felt better. I started writing this blog. I renewed my commitment to yoga and sitting meditation. I went deeper into building my own community of friends and allies, knowing how much we might need that community as things play out. 

And we won some rounds, even while tragedies and defeats played out. Obamacare is still the law of the land, after multiple attempted votes to repeal it. No major legislation has passed. The muslim ban is still mostly on hold and the wall hasn’t been funded. #metoo is shining a light on sexual harassment on a level we’ve never seen before.

And yet, and yet, and yet. Heather Heyer murdered protesting hate. Two men in Portland killed standing up against a violent attack on the light rail train. More black men and trans women killed. Innumerable deportations. An overall climate of tension, fear, violence. And behind the scenes, hundreds of administrative actions that undermine the vision of a just and egalitarian world I want to live in. Judicial appointments that will shape our legal system for a generation.

I don’t know how to make sense of it all. It is not as bad as I thought it would be, and simultaneously much worse. We know more about what we are up against, which feels good. What we are up against is unfettered corporate power, concentration of wealth, and a toxic brew of hatred and racism. These are forces that have always shaped American politics, but they have been emboldened, strengthened, brought out into the open. You hope that shining a light will drive out the darkness. But right now it just feels like it is giving those forces room and nourishment to grow.

What I don’t know what to say: what is the final verdict on the first year of living with DJT? It is horrible, it is painful, it is beautiful, it is hopeless and hopeful all at once.

Two weeks ago I wrote about III.9: Study of the silent moments between rising and restraining subliminal impressions is the transformation of the consciousness towards restraint.

Without even realizing how closely they appear in the text, I have been reflecting lately on III.11: The weakening of scattered attention and the rise of one-pointed attention in the citta (consciousness) is the transformation towards samadhi (realization of the self).

The philosophy of yoga recognizes that it is human nature to be confused. Without limits, the mind goes where the senses call it. The senses are constantly in action – constantly taking in information about the outside and inside worlds. If the mind is only caught up in the senses, it can never find anything permanent, true, eternal. It can’t find a connection to anything divine. It can't even really know what is the sensory data that is coming in. Yoga is to help the mind develop the ability to resist the constant stream of impulses and sensations that flood in. We learn to focus, to let go of sensory data, and develop one-pointed awareness. It is just a stage in the path to spiritual realization – eventually there is no-pointed awareness, which has the benefit of also being all-pointed awareness but without the scattering, confusing quality.

For now, I feel really good about being on the path to one-pointed awareness. In the deeper yoga sense I am still very early on that path. But out here, in the world, I feel 1000 times clearer and more focused than I was a year ago. However confusing and challenging the past year has been, I no longer feel addicted to the news. I’m not seeking constant reminders, analysis, stimulation that can signal what is ahead. And the one-pointed focus is very clear to me – limit, stop, oppose, counter hate, racism, injustice in all of its forms.

That is our mission. I am so thankful for the people who have taken it up alongside me. Thankful that I know my purpose and have support to undertake it.

I hope you are all finding your way in this confusing moment, and that the light of justice is always there with you.

With love, gratitude and solidarity forever.