Gaining Power from Difficulty
"Nothing he achieved was inevitable," President Obama said in his eulogy of Nelson Mandela. "In the arc of his life, we see a man who earned his place in history through struggle and shrewdness, and persistence and faith. "
There are a few expressions I've never much liked.
"That's the way the world works."
"I know how this story ends."
[Said with a shrug] "What're you gonna do?" – except in the context of this fabulous little tune.
These assume that we know life's plot, which absolves us from trying to change the narrative arc.
Mandela made no such assumptions. As with Congresswoman Nita Lowey, history didn't happen to Nelson Mandela, he happened to history. And that is a choice.
Because the thing about history, like democracy, is it isn't a spectator sport.
There is a Natasha Rao poem I just stumbled on: "In my next life, let me be a tomato." The whole thing is a gem. A few bits I want to pluck out.
"The tomatoes have no fear of wind and water,
they gain power from the lightning, while I, in this version
of life, retreat in bed to wither."
And then...
"An overly ripe tomato
will begin sprouting, so excited it is for more life,
so intent to be part of this world, trellising wildly."
Keeping the faith, staying in the struggle, being a persistent tomato. That's all life-giving stuff.
Prince, evidently, gained power from lightning. It was pouring when he was set to perform at the 2007 Super Bowl on a slick tile stage. There were 100 things he could say. But what he chose to say to production designer Bruce Rodgers was singular: "Can you make it rain harder?" Watch the (figurative) lightning strike here.
There is an unrelentingness to the news. It's hard to get re-moralized when each day, sometimes each hour, offers a new way to break your heart.
Grace for ourselves seems in order here. We humans aren't designed for this kind of surround sound news landscape. We are allowed time to wallow and wilt.
But we, like any good tomato, also aren't designed for perpetual droop. So if the news is wearying, here are a few ways to set our own temperature.
My laptop perches on Georgia O'Keeffe's Art and Letters. At some point, I can't trace the origins, the female painter in a man's field said, "I’ve always been absolutely terrified every single moment of my life, and I’ve never let it stop me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.”
Which seems right.
We can be despairing, weary, uncertain our actions matter (they do, more on that here).
And then we can choose to act from the part of us that gains power from lightning, that reaches through the cynicism for that which is life-giving,
Which is to say, we can choose to do that which was not inevitable.