The things we can control
A personal reflection after Tuesday
The only thing that could have taken me out of the country during Election Day was my grandfather’s 100th birthday. My Nanu, who lives in New Delhi, India, was hitting a century, and I was going to be there. I took my son along. My grandfather is, like me, consumed with politics and the news, and he kept asking me what was going to happen. Meaning, in the U.S. election, whose results ramify around the world.
A day or two before Tuesday, I showed him a photograph of Vice President Kamala Harris and me together. His sight is greatly diminished, so I asked him whether he could make out who the man was and who the woman was. He first identified me, perhaps because of the prematurely gray hair he and I share. And then I pointed to her. Who is that? I asked. He looked and looked harder.
“The president to be,” he said finally.
Except that it wasn’t to be.
My nine-year-old boy and my sister and I woke up before dawn on Wednesday, India time, to watch the results. When the truth of the night began to reveal itself through glimpses of county-level data and friend-group-chat emojis and a steadily rightward-drifting needle, we fell into a depression. My parents were soon in the house, too. The whole house, having just celebrated Nanu’s centennial with epic joy the day before, now fell into the doldrums.
Something I began to notice in the hours since is that the presence of my son took on a new significance to me. The simple sight of him; the feel of hugging him; the little thrill of making him laugh. In times like these we are entering, I began to think, the distinction between the things you can control and the things you cannot widens. You can choose the kind of family life you have, what your dinner table smells and sounds like, what your children feel in their bones when they are stressed or confident or doing that audition. In times like these we are entering, the more remote things feel harder to control. You may resist and fight and march and protest; you may speak out; indeed, many of us must in the times that are coming. But I kept looking over at my son and sometimes just holding him and thinking, This I know how to do; this I can make good; this I can choose and shape.
I’m curious if this is happening to some of you. Not only your children, although maybe also that. But a sense of looking more closely at the things close to you where you can act and choose and shape and guide, when other things feel like they’re slipping out of reach. Maybe it’s the community garden you belong to. Maybe it’s your church choir. Maybe it’s the neighborhood business you’ve been thinking of starting. Maybe it’s the refugee program you’ve been putting off volunteering with. Maybe it’s the friends you love and aspire to gather for dinner but never find the time, because life. Maybe in times like these we are entering, you will find the time to have them over for dinner. Because these are the things we can control.
In times like these we are entering, when it will become harder to have systems that are kind, interpersonal kindness will matter more. It shouldn’t have to, but it will. Having each other’s backs will matter more. Checking in on your friends will matter more. Letting people sleep on your couch will matter more. Cooking for people who are sick will matter more. We should not be in a situation where the burden of care shifts so radically from the center to the edges, from a coordinated system to an ad hoc network, but it is where we are headed. And we will all be called on in the times ahead to be for each other what, in a better time, the system would be.
If you have a spare moment today, text or, better yet, call someone you care about and don’t reach out to enough. And just tell them you will be there in the days that are coming. That’s it. That’s the assignment.
I hope The Ink will be essential to the thinking and reimagining and reckoning and doing that all lie ahead. On this dark day, I want to thank you for being a part of what we are and what we do. And I promise you that this community is going to find every way possible to be there for you in the times that lie ahead and be there for this country and for what it can be still.
I too have been reaching out to family, even thinking about moving closer to be with people on know and trust and love. I wrote this yesterday morning:
Morning Aftershocks
Christine Barbour
The one thing I can tell you today is that for four long years Donald Trump lived in my head. I let him in. My disgust for all he stands for and my anger and determination to fight it gave him some prime real estate. For four more years he haunted my spirit, even as I reveled in his absence from the house of our people. My anticipatory relief at “not going back,” of finally being rid of him, let me know what weight I still carried.
I’m not in denial and I’m not stupid. I know he won last night, and I am well aware of what it says about us and of the danger ahead.
But, still, I’m not going back. The promise I’m making to myself in this new Trump era is that he gets no piece of me. I’m nearly 70. I don’t know how much time I have left in this awesome and beautiful world. But I will cede no more of it to the anxiety, fear, and existential dread I felt from 2016 to 2020, and that has danced at the edge of my consciousness ever since.
I will also not join in the blaming and finger-pointing at the people who joined me in fighting this good fight. It’s not the fault of Harris’s VP pick or her earlier liberal positions or her laugh. It’s not the fault of Joe Biden for not leaving the race earlier. It’s not the fault of the Republicans who joined us after the rot they had tolerated in their party for too long, got too putrid. It is the responsibility of people who could not trust a strong, smart, competent woman to do a job as well as an insecure, ignorant and deranged felon. It’s the misogyny. Again.
I can’t want health, sanity, and safety for my country more than it wants it for itself.
I will obey the rule of law. I will fight to protect the vulnerable. I will vote, when I can, for a better deal.
But I am pledging my allegiance to the vision of America that I voted for yesterday, a place of freedom and democracy, justice and opportunity, truth, science, and progress. I will continue to teach my students about that American dream. And I am living as I would live in that country — in joy and generosity and an expansive love — and I will turn the full beam of my light on whomever comes my way.
I will not hate. I will not dread. And I will never let DJT occupy an inch of my precious heart and soul ever again. He has not won me. He never will.
Thank you, Anand! Your insights and perspectives have been invaluable here and on MSNBC. This piece really hit home for me. After my 23yo daughter and I cried and consoled each other, my family went out for breakfast. We were in mourning and I didn't understand how people were laughing and chatting as if nothing had happened. I've been checking in on friends and family. Our pandemic-era cousins' Zoom calls will start again. Less social media and cable news, more self care and remembering what's really most important. And then I'll be ready to fight back. My question is how will we fight oligarchs and fascists when they operate in the dark and control the government, SCOTUS and media?