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When asked what was the hardest thing Thich Nhat Hanh practices, he said: “Not allow yourself to be overwhelmed by despair”.
It is such a powerful statement, it deserved to be repeated.
Despair is an emotion described really well in Grief Alongside Water by Robert Kingett. Not giving into despair can be very hard, if it is not possible to see what else can still be done. Biologically, when under great threat, the body and mind exhibit a Freeze, Fight, Flight response. When that response doesn't resolve the situation, a person can remain broken forever. But it doesn't have to be this way.
A good practice can help one to always be able to take one step in the right direction. I'll share my practice here today.
Do one thing
One thing that I use as a mantra is to ask myself: what is the next physical thing I can do that would make the world a slightly better place. This morning, as I was laying in my bed depressed about the state of the world, despair ready to consume me, I answered this question simply: “maybe you could get out of bed, old friend” (I like to call myself old friend in difficult times, it helps). One thing led to another… I had a coffee, remembering my coffee loving friend in Gaza. I painted a bird house. Now I'm writing this article. Neither is helping the world very much, but they are not harmful, and they do help a little bit in my little world. That will have to do.
Don't place blame
When I perceive a problem, I always feel a strong urge to find the cause and solve it. And boy are there enough problems to perceive and causes to find. The problem here is that causes often are actions or behaviors of others, and placing blame on others invites a feeling of helplessness that is a seed of despair. I'm not saying that we should kindly thank others for their bad behavior, but rather that we should not be focused too much on the bad behavior of others, because it is not under our control anyway. If we believe all problems are caused by others, we will be distracted from the things that _are_ under our control. And we will talk unhelpful talk, instead of act in a helpful way.
Be an activist, not a talkivist
In dutch we have a saying: “De beste stuurlui staan aan wal”→ “The best sailors are on the docks”. If you've ever tried to park a car as an inexperienced driver in front of a crowd of acquaintances, you probably know what I mean. It can be very blocking and demotivating for people to receive advice they don't have the means to follow, while the advisor is clearly not willing to take the action themselves. Don't be that person. When you feel like you need to tell someone what they're doing wrong, ask yourself what you can do right instead.
Even if the advice is good and not judgmental, but there is nobody willing and able to follow it, it is a useless distraction. Share the idea in a safe place (I'm putting it on my wiki right now) by all means, but don't overwhelm activists with your talking if you're not willing and able to put your your money where your mouth is or walk the walk.
Don't expect to win
This is the hardest truth: we're not going to win this, at least not very quickly. I'm not able to sugercoat it like Thay, so I'll just say it like it is: we're pretty fucked right now. As already mentioned in Fixing the world one bug at a time we should exhibit pessimism of intellect and optimism of will at the same time.
If we look at a specific glaring wrong in the world: the genocide in Gaza, we can seen how that applies. The Palestinians have been oppressed for over a hundred years, and freeing them means resisting the most advanced armies and propaganda machine the world has ever seen. We're not going to stop this machine in a Sunday afternoon over a cup of tea with some toots and some good intentions. As most of the resisters in WW2 didn't survive the war, it is more likely that any of us will be tortured to death by fascist than that we fully stop the oppression in our lifetimes. Or at least that's my pessimist intellect's estimation. But that's irrellevant.
Likely failure doesn't mean at all that it is acceptable to do nothing.
It does mean however, that it is acceptable to lose loudly. Like Hannie Schaft did in WW2 and like many others have done before and after her. At some point, it becomes inescapable from an ethical perspective to put our bodies in harms way
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