12/31/21

By Josh Rubin

This is a time of sensory overload. All of us have bad news either to dread or suffer. The pandemic is personal, a wolf at our door.

As for the cause that draws us together here, for those that can bear its barrage of tragic news and profound disappointment, we are more and more alone in our concerns. Few of the beleaguered have the capacity to turn what they can manage to pay attention to into outrage, and I find it hard to blame them. We live only one life, and it can hold a finite amount of unhappiness, though it may at times seem oceanic.

We will, no doubt, those of us who remain attached to our cause, see more of the same this year. We will watch streams of humanity flowing toward us, only to be dammed by our walls and damned by policies that remain the same, no matter the hand at the tiller. And those of us who add to the burden we personally carry the weight of the shifting universe, that drives the tides that rise and fall independent of the delusion of control, will choose to suffer by watching, witnessing, and crying into the wind. Not because we believe it will work, but because we no longer know how to stop.

It is good to hear your voices, rising in passion, above the clamor and chaos. To know you are there.