When I began this podcast 100 weeks ago, I yearned for just a little uplift. Just for me. All my adult life I have been used to taking the role of cheering up my loved ones and my friends, of being “the funny person” who’s habit it was to make light in the darkness. Unfortunately instead of celebration we have an elegy.
I had expected the qualified candidate for president to win the election for president in 2016. Everyone did. When Trump won, it was a shock. It seemed like a big practical joke that everyone was in on but us. Even Trump didn’t expect to take the White House.
For a while we whined that privileged white whine – oh it’ll be awful, or he’s not interested in government; or, he’ll ignore his responsibilities and we’ll be okay – remember he was a supporter of Planned Parenthood, and he is a New Yorker.
The week of his inauguration things started to slide downhill. The people (white men of a certain age) he named to his cabinet (and okay Betsy DeVos is female and Ben Carson is black) were not only grossly unqualified for their positions; they were people who were in favor of disbanding their positions’ mandates: Rick Perry wanted to close down the Department of Energy before he was named to run it. Betsy DeVos had had zero interaction or background in public education; she’s been gutting it ever since.
I became more and more morose, downcast, and pessimistic. Some of my friends were concerned; the Lisa they knew had disappeared or diminished. I wasn’t reliably up and cheerful and cracking wise.
By the Spring of 2018 I decided to find just five little things that kept my spirits up – really just a classic gratitude exercise that some people I know practice in their journals, or in their meditations or prayers, or at dinner with their children. I wrote down five little things – the scent of a bough of lilacs, the delights of fresh basil, the taste of the first corn of the summer, a book I had just finished and enjoyed. It wasn’t too bad. By summer I was recording these pleasures, and in due time, the little podcast became an interview program in which our guests shared their five things too.
Even when I became spitting mad or discouraged the 10 things in our podcast left at least the two of us, my guest and me, in a better mood. It seemed to work with listeners as well.
Now here we are, two years later, and it feels like we as Americans and members of the global community are standing at the abyss. Righteous indignation has been subsumed into violence. Anger and hurt are everywhere. I’m enraged most of the day.
So in honor of the protests, and in the memory of George Floyd, and David McAtee, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Nina Pop, Ahmaud Arbery, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, and so many other Black people, murdered for being black, this week will be different at headquarters. No lilacs, no oat milk, or great Netflix series. Today I pause with you all, try to take a breath, and think about how we function with a government that is neither listening to us, or is distorting our message for their ends, while keeping a veil over what they are doing while we are distracted and miserable.
The work that we as white people have to do is substantial. We have wittingly and unwittingly been the oppressors. Now is the time for study and reflection (as opposed to thoughts and prayers), and I will endeavor to do better and be more mindful in my interactions with people of color.
I leave you with this poem by my teacher, the poet Michael S. Harper. This is “Brother John” recited by the poet.
Be kind to one another and act natural.
