The only way out is through

Sadness is creeping up every avenue of life for most of us right now, in the growing shadows of the New American Reich. We feel it in lives that will be lost avoidably too soon, in lost pathways of purpose in education and careers, in lost hope for progress in so many facets of American life, in lost opportunities that just vanish, every day, like so many puffs of smoke. It feels surreal, that what we had for decades that was making this country truly great could be crushed into dust with wanton cruelty while the people who ought to have done everything in their power to stop it sit on their hands, flap their mouths, and effectively do nothing.

So it is angering. Galling. Outraging. Scary. Unbelievable. Infuriating. It is all of these things.

And also, it is just so sad.

Which means in addition to all of those other reactions, we have this big persistent emotion to process, the one that takes its own time, that sits side by side with uncertainty and magnifies everything else.

We never, as a nation, even processed the immense losses during the peak of the Covid pandemic. So many lives. We never, as a nation, had the leadership needed to process that, or the appalling, nightmarish invasion of our Capitol, or the pain for some of us of seeing people we loved or respected or cared for falling into a rabbit hole of unreality that seems to have no end.

And we don't have time now to process the daily flood of intentionally inflicted harms across every facet of our society or the future that they portend because they come at us so fast, so furiously, so intentionally so, to discombobulate and disorient us, to make us try to look 500 places except the one place they don't want us to look.

So obviously, we don't feel like we have time to process all of this sadness or loss, and certainly no leadership to guide us in this most unserious of countries led by darkly cartoonish villains who can apparently just get away with rape, murder, child harm, and more.

I know that one antidote to all of this is to find joy where you can, small joy, big joy, transient joy, lasting joy. It is an effective antidote. It also is an effective middle finger to these people trying to hurt us. I recommend it.

But I think maybe we also need to find moments where we focus on this sadness and face it and talk about it, even if we can't solve it or make it go away. Just times and places to say to people we trust, to each other: I am sad. This is all so sad.

And sit with that.

And then vow to keep on keepin' on because the only way out of this is through.