How to Resist One of This Moment’s Greatest Temptations

Trappist monk Thomas Merton wraps up his book The Seven Storey Mountain with a useful phrase: “Here ends the book, but not the searching.” It rhymes a bit with Rainer Maria Rilke’s guidance to not just live the questions, but to love the questions.

And it clashes with that basic human craving for periods over question marks, a well-lit career path over an undefined future, knowns over unknowns.

For one of the more mystical statements to come from a Pentagon press briefing, here’s former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s legendary breakdown of knowns and unknowns.

We are certainty-craving creatures in an uncertain world, aren’t we?

So here’s a great temptation of the moment: not knowing what the future will be for our country, we may be tempted to assume the very worst.

It might be to insulate ourselves from despair, heartbreak; we won’t be caught off guard if it all burns to the ground. It might be that we don’t want to come across as naive; there’s a perceived worldliness to pessimism. It’s a form of protection.

But it comes with a few risks. As Marilynne Robinson wrote in Gilead, "Often enough, when we think we are protecting ourselves, we are struggling against our rescuer."

The temptation to assume the worst can dismiss evidence that the worst might not come to pass: positive election outcomes must be flukes, good poll numbers surely won’t last. And it can deflate useful action: if it’s all going to pot, why bother calling my Senator, recruiting local election candidates, and on.

In other words, the temptation to assume the worst about the future of our country can blind us to and immobilize us from the very things that yield a better future for our country.

What’s the opposite of assuming the worst for our country? I think it’s something along the lines of working for the best. Pushing for the future we want, with no guarantee it will come to pass. Because the push, the work itself is worthwhile.

"Resistance is first of all a matter of principle and a way to live, to make yourself one small republic of unconquered spirit,” wrote Rebecca Solnit. "You hope for results, but you don't depend on them.”

Which rhymes a bit with some Howard Zinn wisdom my mother kept on a faded sticky-note above her desk: “The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."

Uncertainty asks a lot from us. Sometimes too much. Not knowing what the future will be for our country, of course we may be tempted to assume the very worst. But instead, perhaps we can take a page from Emily Dickinson, who took a different path: "Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door.”

And that, I think, rhymes with what our democracy needs right now.