Let’s be real, the world has been exceptionally tragic lately. Even for those of us who’ve seen a pretty steady stream of horrific news stories throughout our lifetimes… the past few weeks have felt even more intensified. It’s been truly hard to watch as groups and countries and parties come to violence and the most innocent people end up paying the price.
Alongside the tragedy has come an especially high level of toxic discourse. Each horrific image elicits justifiably strong feelings, but as the world’s emotions have been running higher, we haven’t been in a great space for hearing each other out and making room for what the other person is going through.
Added a new episode of Creative Changemaker today and this one’s a bit different.
It’s a call to pause and actually feel how heavy things are right now.
I’m a solution-oriented person. I normally fill the role of finding the positive and pointing towards it. But there’s a clarity you gain by sitting and feeling the heaviness of what’s happening that you can’t get any other way.
One thing I’ve observed is people who would normally be on the same page when it comes to most things being shocked to find themselves at odds lately. And not just at odds, but disappointed and disgusted with each other's actions. It seems truly reprehensible for our friends to be acting the way they do, because it seems like they’re supporting those responsible for the news images that have been breaking our heart. But of course, it’s being fueled by their own heartbreak.
No matter how each person might be differently processing the world’s latest tragedies, there are common parts to the experience. Outrage. Uncertainty. Devastation. And a motivation to act in a way that might put an end to it.
To be clear, this isn’t meant to be both-siderism. While peace and reconciliation might be an ultimate goal, so many important conversations are sidestepped and so many injustices are allowed to keep going by acting as if the responsibility for aggression is always even. I am all about context. So much of my storytelling and creative work exists to put proper context around things.
Truth and context are usually required before reconciliation and unity can be had.
But before truth and context?
We need to grieve.
Actually process the reality of what is happening, the ugliness of what we do to each other. It is the hardest part of the process to sit through, one that makes you want to escape almost as soon as you start. But I’ve seen again and again that things are dealt with so much better once their emotional weight is properly felt.
I feel like a lot of people are putting their pain out into the world, but few people feel like their pain is being fully heard. If anything, there’s a lot of dismissiveness going around.
I started to prize sadness a lot more when I stopped seeing it as an unpleasant experience to avoid, and instead saw it as a signal to my heart. It was a signal that whatever I happened to be grieving had value, and importance.
I also believe that sadness gives us a perspective that can’t be arrived at any other way.
It’s just like one of my favorite quotes by Oscar Romero. Some things can only be seen through eyes that have cried.
When I think of some of the best work I’ve made, work that I thought was creatively satisfying, work that’s moved people… it’s work I’ve done very shortly after some heartbreak. Especially heartbreak going on at global scale.
We’ve got some of that going on right now. And we definitely had a lot of that in the year 2020, which is about the time I really started focusing on properly leaning into what breaks my heart.
I learned there are so many ways to respond. You can join a demonstration. You can draw. You can pray. You can cry. You can write. Donate. Listen. Learn more.
But what’s important is to go through it, not to avoid it.