It’s hard. It’s a burden. Your life is so full, so busy, and then Darth Cheeto goes and farts again. You’re literally shaking, but can’t muster the energy to lift your finger in protest. Does that make you a bad person? Where can you turn for a tummy rub that the utter pointlessness of your existence doesn’t make you a traitor to the cause?
Dear Roxane,
Yes, *Roxane Gay. Who better to turn to when you need serious life advice?
I’ve slowly realized, with considerable shame, that I am no better. I’ve been harboring equal measures of apathy since November 2016. I have what seem like good excuses: having a baby, illness and death in my family, a challenging job, etc., but the truth is, these mask my underlying condition of paralysis. I have made some weak attempts to engage (joining a call, buying a book, following the play-by-play of the Alabama special election) but nothing approximating real action. I have considered that I’m coping with the allostatic load of living as a black woman during what feels like a heightened moment of racism in the country by retreating, but I think that is only partly true.
Well heck, you bought a book? What more could any person do to thwart The Donald and his denizens of doom?
I continue to be outraged by this administration’s treatment of Latinos, Native Americans, Muslims, L.G.B.T. folks, women and so many others. But I’m struggling to summon a response. Do you have words of wisdom to help me understand and perhaps overcome my feelings of apathy?
Not to highlight her diminution of the intersectionality of the oppressed, but who better to provide words of wisdom to the apathetic than Gay? And Roxy (may I call you Roxy) delivers.
I have no doubt that many people can relate to your letter. I can relate to it. It is difficult to balance activism and investing in the greater good with the demands of an ordinary life. It’s hard to know what to pay attention to and what to respond to and how. It is hard to bear the allostatic load of living as a black woman in a country where we continually have to assert our right to personhood. It is damn hard to expand the limits of our empathy when our emotional attention is already stretched too thin in a world run through with inequity, strife and suffering.
When you spend all your time continually asserting your personhood and buying the occasional book, what more can be expected of you?
Every day since the 2016 election there has been some terrible new story about the havoc wreaked by the current administration. It’s not just overwhelming, it is exhausting.
This epidemic of exhaustion is deeply troubling. Perhaps vitamins? More time at the gym? Women, and their allies, seem to suffer from a decided lack of zip. Someone should do something about that.
My point is, there is a lot going on in the world. There is a lot going on in my world. There is a lot going on in your world. This is the nature of life. We try to find ways to balance taking care of ourselves and our families, with caring about the world we live in and the greater good. Sometimes, we will fall short in one of these areas. Sometimes we will fall short in all of these areas. Most of the time, we do the best we can.
And really, can anyone ask that you do more than “the best we can”?
Lately, I’ve been doing two things to maintain my sanity without checking out completely. I’ve stopped watching cable news because the 24-hour news cycle has become an incoherent mess. There are plenty of ways to stay well informed without listening to lazy punditry and an endless regurgitation of only the most salacious news. I’ve also been trying to pick one issue at a time in which to invest my social-justice-oriented energy.
Ah, so that explains why Roxy is constantly exhausted. She’s running on social-justice-oriented energy.
If I focus on just one issue and apply genuine effort and attention to it, I just might contribute something useful. I choose to invest that energy in different ways, whether it’s writing about a pressing issue, amplifying the voices of others, donating money and time to nonprofit organizations, or whatever I can think of that might be useful. Sometimes, I have no idea how I can be useful, so I ask people who are well positioned to point me in the right direction because I recognize that I don’t have to have all the answers.
Much to my chagrin, Roxy actually has a point here. We’re inundated with information, so much so that it’s difficult if not impossible to keep abreast of all that interests or concerns you. People spin around in outrage circles, unable to focus long enough on any particular problem to come up with a plan of action to do something about it, if that’s their inclination. Yes, there’s someone shouting squirrel, but rather than complain about how it’s exhausting to be alive, pick a problem and focus on it.
Much as we may have a very different vision of what constitutes “genuine effort and attention,” as there is no contribution from merely paying attention to news and feeling sad about it in the privacy of your own Amazon account, one of the attributes in shortest supply these days is the ability and will to pick a target that matters and then do something useful and effective to address it.
Right, Roxy?
What you describe in your letter is not apathy. You aren’t indifferent to the current state of the world. You are human, a woman trying to balance your own needs with doing good in the world, and right now, your own needs are winning out. Take the time you need. There is no shame in that so long as you remember to extend your empathy as far as you can when your emotional stores have replenished.
Oh, Roxy. An empty tummy rub about replenishing her emotional stores? Here you actually said something useful, then you squandered it in the cesspool of sad apologist bullshit? Don’t you have anything, anything at all, more useful to offer than a tummy rub?
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