Joyful Resistance
Like half of America, I had been working to pick my battered, bewildered psyche up off the floor at the end of a week that began with so much promise: Really?! We just elected the convicted felon, the overt sexist, the puppet of Putin, the opponent of climate solutions, the one who would get a failing grade in Citizenship in any elementary school in the country?! Really?! That half the adults in my country could ignore, or even embrace, the mean-spiritedness, the self-absorption, the conspicuously racist and particularly misogynistic messages of this spoiled man who models how not to be a decent human being—or ignore the multitude of warnings from those who had worked closely with him of his fundamental unfitness for office—elicited a very deep well of sorrow, spiced with a lot of anger.
Even so, at this dark moment, perennial, restorative truths re-declared themselves: The bigger, wilder world is our ally. Friends and families matter most and give us strength. We should never succumb to despair, and community is one of the most effective antidotes. We ultimately accomplish more with love and joy than with hate and fear.
Many years ago, when I was a young, idealistic worker for George McGovern’s campaign—weeks spent knocking on doors, leafleting at shopping malls and anywhere else where potential voters congregated—I was fully shocked and crushed the morning after the election, which was the biggest landslide in history: forty-nine states to one in the Electoral College, and a massive disparity in the popular vote. (Which, I feel obliged to point out, is NOT the case this time—though the winning candidate and many in the media would have us believe this was a crushing victory, the popular vote margin, while demoralizing, was smaller than any election since 2000.) It was easy to feel hopeless that bleak morning in 1972, knowing the unctuous Richard Nixon was returning to power for four more years. And yet. Less than two years later he hobbled out of Washington in humiliation. That disgraced exit couldn’t have been predicted that post-election morning. It’s important to remember, during this disheartening post-election period, that we, too, cannot decipher what will happen next, nor how the seemingly mighty might fall.
The morning after the election, I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut. Yet my attention was still drawn, as it is every morning, to the movement of wings outside my window. Nuthatches walked down trunks of Emory oaks, just like normal. Flocks of finches, sparrows, mountain chickadees, and bushtits swooped in to refuel after a freezing night. Several species of woodpeckers flew in, squawking. During these moments of attention, my mind was lifted, ever so briefly, out of human-upon-human despair. The resilience of these birds was just as important and valid a part of the morning news as the cataclysmic political headlines blaring across my screens.
So, a few thoughts on resilience for the coming days and weeks:
§ Remember that nature is our greatest and most consistent ally. The practice of natural history—simply put, attentiveness to the more-than-human world—is an open door, inviting connection with all our relations. This unpretentious practice is our evolutionary birthright, accessible to us all.
§ Watch birds or flowers in the forest, in sidewalk cracks, or whatever aspect of the enveloping wild world catches your fancy. Each glimpse of another life is a momentary prayer for healing.
§ Have compassion for yourself as you struggle to make this extra effort. Compassion—“feeling with”—is critically important. So is accepting that this will likely be extra challenging for a while, as we may find ourselves newly suspicious of some of our neighbors.
§ Resist succumbing to despair. Every authoritarian in the world wants people to feel powerless.
§ Laughter and joy matter and hold power; they help us resist.
§ Remember how little we really know about what is going to happen.
§ Celebrate all the nurturing relationships with human and more-than-human beings alike, that enrich our world, that give us motivation and support.
§ Listen to—or even better, play—music. Music is one of the greatest things people have ever figured out how to do, and not much comes close to its power for transcendence, for evoking emotion, and, occasionally, for bringing people together.
§ And stay healthy—it serves no one if we slip into a sludgy haze.
The sad truth is that because of this election, all beings, including those not yet born—especially those—may suffer, living in a diminished world. But we can lessen the suffering, or at the very least not contribute to it, by never giving up, by mounting Joyful Resistance. Thoreau admonished us to “Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine.” And, let’s remember, this sort of friction works better—and lasts longer—when lubricated with laughter and never-ending wonder at the still-vibrant beauty of the world.
THOMAS LOWE FLEISCHNER is the editor of Nature Love Medicine: Essays On Wildness and Wellness, and author of the forthcoming Astonished By Beauty: Natural History As a Practice of Connection. He was the founding director of the Natural History Institute in Prescott, Arizona, and is Faculty Emeritus at Prescott College.