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[hungryghosts]

More current events talk: this is stuff that I consider hopeful, soul-nourishing, action-oriented stuff, but I'll still put it under a cut in case anyone needs to avoid it.

How To Do Enough: Especially When You Feel Like You Can't

Every culture has a mythology: larger-than-life stories that tell us how the world works and what characteristics make a hero. Ours is a very young culture and our primary mythology is younger still: superhero stories.

There are some great things about our superhero mythology. The idea of powerful defenders making the world better through talent, determination, and force of will can be very inspirational, and the “with great power comes great responsibility” message is a good one. These stories can get pretty nuanced in their explorations of good and evil, state oppression, working outside the system, and so on. Cool.

But there are messages in these stories that can be harmful, and those lessons are in the air we breathe whether we’re fans of the genre or not. Only exceptional people can triumph over the forces of darkness. Fighting evildoers involves direct confrontation with bold and flashy moves, either by yourself or with a group of friends just as special as you are. Superman doesn’t need help, not really: he’s Superman. He can do it on his own. The traditional super hero dilemma isn’t whether they can. It’s whether they want to.

Our vision of the heroic is very individualistic, and that leads to a lot of guilt. Surely we should be able to fix things, right? If we could find the right words, the right actions, we could fix this: face down the administration and force them to stop. And if we can’t, we’re helpless. Useless. Not enough. You can know intellectually how silly this framing is and still feel it on a deep, personal level, and a lot of people do. It’s something I’ve struggled with. The people who write these comments are often struggling with it too.

Here’s the truth: it takes a lot of people to save the world, with a LOT of different skillsets and talents. There are so many jobs to do, and most of them aren’t very glamorous, and we’ve been taught to view a lot of them as small and inconsequential. But all those jobs need doing, and none of us can do all those jobs alone.

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I have no doubt that your social circle provides you with comfort, dear reader, and I am equally certain that you provide them with comfort right back. These things keep people going. Having friends we can trust and lean on helps all of us through tough times, and times are really, really tough right now.

I have a friend who periodically asserts that she’s not doing enough. Three years ago, this friend inaugurated something we call Soup Night. Once a week, someone makes soup at their place, and then whoever’s free comes over and eats the soup. People are encouraged to bring bread or a side dish, but no worries if they can’t. That’s it. That’s the whole thing.

Three years later, there are multiple soup nights in New York City and it’s the locus of an extended social network of people who enjoy each other’s company. It’s a spot of warmth in my own life that’s sustained me through some pretty dark times, and I know I’m not alone in that. In a million years, I could never have made Soup Night into the institution it’s become: I’m not a great cook, I have a lot of anxiety around organizing events and I don’t have the social network for it (or I didn’t, before Soup Night helped me gain one).

We all bring something to the table. A lot of people take their own skills for granted, especially when those skills are traditionally unpaid labor. Arranging a gathering and making a delicious soup out of nothing is as natural for my friend as it is anxiety-inducing for me; it doesn’t feel like a skill to her. But it absolutely is, and I sure am glad some people have it.

If you want to do more but don’t know what to do, a good place to start is by thinking about what you’re good at and what you enjoy doing. Make a list, if you’re so inclined. Include everything, even if it seems completely irrelevant to our current situation. How can those skills make the world around you brighter and better? How can you use them to build community or give people something they need, tangible or otherwise?

This is such a weird story, but: in late 2021 I had a full-on nervous breakdown. The brownstone directly across the street from me had a red door and, since it was Christmas, the occupant had hung a big wreath on it. I spent a lot of time staring out the window at that door. It was such a cheerful color of red, and such a lovely wreath, and it was this tiny bit of color when the entire world felt grey. You’ve done things that have impacted people in ways you’ll never know. Anything that makes the world more beautiful can be a message of hope for someone who might need it very badly.