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.

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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.