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ACCORDING TO LIZ - We’ve passed the winter solstice. 2023 is in the rear view mirror. We’ve survived the obligations of Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Saturnalia, the greeting of the returning sun from Stonehenge...
New Year’s resolutions have been made and broken or not made at all.
Tis the season of snow and cold in the northern hemisphere.
It is candles and fire, the rebirth of plants only a promise under the soil and behind the brown of last summer’s greenery.
For too many, it is also the season of despair and confusion.
Dreamed-of vacations descend into travel chaos; expectations are going through the roof while results are too often mediocre.
Our gas prices may not have gone up 60% like in Argentina... but we still whine incessantly about how much we pay at the pump (although the price today is about the same as last January). Even though the expectation is that fuel prices will trend lower this year, people will inevitably find reason to complain.
But what would happen if they really started to soar? What would happen if the military make a preemptive bid for, or hoard, the American oil reserves?
Would we cut unnecessary trips, finally buy that EV after years of talking? Or unrealistically, just demand our Congressman ‘fix’ things?
Politicians on the right and the left, further amplified by divisive soundbite-focused infotainment and social media, are deliberately revving up people’s fears – of crime (even though murders and most other offenses are on the decline), of wokeness, of ‘other’ – all for their own ends.
We can’t make gas prices go down any more than we can make the sun come up.
What we can do is manage our expectations and take concrete steps to minimize our pain instead of relying on the government – at once reviled and omnipotent – to fix a world toppling on the brink of disaster.
Even when we don’t live in a war zone or a place without food or drinking water, we read the news, we watch it online. Over and over again, like the World Trade Center towers falling and falling in 2001.
The spreading darkness of wars, dysfunctional governments, fentanyl deaths, mass shootings, reports of refugees risking the dangers of the Darién Gap or floundering in small boats in the Mediterranean, the catastrophes of climate change with its droughts, floods, fires and hurricanes.
Ukraine, Israel and Gaza are all inside us. If we are empathic and awake, we share the pain of all the world’s tragedies in our bodies and in our souls.
But we can choose not to despair, to push back on end-of-times narratives.
Oftentimes small actions can demonstrate to friends and family a way forward that can shift the fulcrum of the world.
A Jackie Robinson playing baseball on an all-white team in 1947 did exponentially more for race relations than any protest, and set up Truman ending segregation in the military the following year.
Women quietly doing the work provided role-models for generations of girls.
The disproportionate number of Asian-Americans named for Connie Chung demonstrates the power of seeing a double-minority in a position of influence.
Real change comes from slow growth; what appears to be an overnight revolution has a lot of individual actions underpinning it.
We experience our losses, real or perceived, more powerfully than progress. But it doesn’t make that progress any less real.
And progress can begin with stepping outside your comfort zone just a little, reaching out a helping hand, welcoming another, accepting change as inevitable, and refusing to demonize differences.
Those little changes that when multiplied worldwide can have a helluva huge impact.
Start small.
Be thoughtful about waste. Start reducing your possessions wisely. Reuse wherever possible.
Repurpose those gifts that don’t zing for you to good homes instead of adding them to landfills.
Gift wisely. Quantity will never be a substitute for quality and remember how many of those cheap purchases are designed to be replaced as part of a supply chain promoting ecological damage and worker abuse.
And that’s before the fossil fuel impacts of making, shipping, advertising, and delivery.
Downsize – how much you buy, how much you eat, commitments and self-imposed duties, especially those you don’t like or do only out of obligation or appearance.
Embrace a simpler life, one that allows you to step off the corporate racetrack and empower yourself to enjoy quality time. By your definition.
Volunteer.
Accept that you can never fix people’s lives, your own or others. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.
Connect. If you usually text, e-mail; if you usually e-mail, pick up the phone; if you usually call, get together.
Chat with the cashier or phone agent – enough to let them know you see them as a real person, worthy of those few minutes of your time.
Call a friend. Ask them how they feel. And listen, really listen. In allowing them to express their feelings, the catharsis for both raconteur and listener can create new directions on the path of life and, often, raise the spirits of both.
Live in the present and find pleasure in doing what you can without expectations of reward. Pay it forward.
Give blood, offer to help a neighbor, read to a shut-in.
Many of us have an idealized memory of our pasts that rarely correlates with realities today.
The Cuba that existed when people fled from Castro is not the same country in 2024 so they can never go back; the Camelot of the JFK years is as much of a fantasy when compared to America today.
Accept it and move on.
Grant yourself the grace to slow down and experience the passage of your time here on earth. Even bad times often have a lot of laughter and joy mixed in.
My mother died 20 years ago but I carry the good memories with me. And have let what can’t be changed slide away.
Find the light – the many lights – in our hearts. And don’t forget to share them.
(Liz Amsden is a contributor to CityWatch and an activist from Northeast Los Angeles with opinions on much of what goes on in our lives. She has written extensively on the City's budget and services as well as her many other interests and passions. In her real life she works on budgets for film and television where fiction can rarely be as strange as the truth of living in today's world.)
