the fight ahead

Tom Nichols, “Trump Has Won, but Democracy Is Not Over,” The Atlantic

“Paradoxically, however, Trump’s reckless venality is a reason for hope. Trump has the soul of a fascist but the mind of a disordered child. He will likely be surrounded by terrible but incompetent people. All of them can be beaten: in court, in Congress, in statehouses around the nation, and in the public arena. America is a federal republic, and the states—at least those in the union that will still care about democracy—have ways to protect their citizens from a rogue president. Nothing is inevitable, and democracy will not fall overnight.

Do not misunderstand me. I am not counseling complacency: Trump’s reelection is a national emergency. If we have learned anything from the past several years, it’s that feel-good, performative politics can’t win elections, but if there was ever a time to exercise the American right of free assembly, it is now—not least because Trump is determined to end such rights and silence his opponents. Americans must stay engaged and make their voices heard at every turn. They should find and support organizations and institutions committed to American democracy, and especially those determined to fight Trump in the courts. They must encourage candidates in the coming 2026 elections who will oppose Trump’s plans and challenge his legislative enablers.”

parenthood

“Who is trusted to have a child?”, Modern Love, The New York Times, Daniel Lam

Raw, beautiful, heartbreaking.

“One of the reasons I didn’t come out as gay until I was 27 was that I didn’t want to give up the idea of having a wife. At 33, I have learned to let that go, the faceless woman I’ve carried around in my mind for so long. I recognize her now as an embodiment of everything I was at risk of losing if I ever let my secret slip: a traditional marriage and family, including the notion of fatherhood, or at least how I was taught to perceive it — schoolyard logic that’s been seared into my mind in which there can’t exist a father without a mother, or a mother without a father, or a child without either of them.”

“It has been harder for me to want to have children since becoming a pediatrician. Admittedly, my perspective is skewed. I have been trained to expect bronchiolitis at every corner, pneumonia and sepsis a constant threat. I have seen skin broken too many times for chest tubes, burr holes, wound packing and nerve blocks, pudgy arms and legs poked for blood draws, fluids and antibiotics.

My niece and nephew are toddlers, both unstoppable, and it’s always an adjustment when I see them, how little they need me, how capable they are, how fragile they aren’t.

Especially after starting my fellowship in pediatric emergency medicine, experience has taught me to anticipate disaster. There’s a running joke among my colleagues that takes the form of a growing list of all the things we’ll never let our children do: eating uncut grapes or hot dogs, riding ATVs and visiting a trampoline park.

It’s a joke because we take it to an unfathomable extreme, each item laughable only when it is far enough removed from the tragedy it came from, the lesson learned too late that nothing — no one — is ever truly ours.”

grief

Jamie Anderson

“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.”

surrender to the reality

Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

“You surrender to the reality that things just take the time they take, and that you can’t quiet your anxieties by working faster, because it isn’t within your power to force reality’s pace as much as you feel you need to, and because the faster you go, the faster you’ll need to go.”

the best parts of living

Rita Dove, “Last Words,” The New Yorker, January 25, 2021

I don’t want to die in a poem

the words burning in eulogy

the sun howling why

the moon sighing why not

I don’t want to die in bed

which is a poem gone wrong

a world turned in on itself

a floating navel of dreams

I won’t meet death in a field

like a dot punctuating a page

it’s too vast yet too tiny

everyone will say it’s a bit cinematic

I don’t want to pass away in your arms

those gentle parentheses

nor expire outside of their swoon

self-propelled determined shouting

Let the end come

as the best parts of living have come

unsought and undeserved

inconvenient

now that’s a good death

what nonsense you say

that’s not even worth

writing down

A moment

Joy

“I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who has been so excited about and supportive of the #WindowsofLight project. (This is obviously not a WOL photo—it’s from a newborn session.) This project has buoyed me and returned me to a place of hope. It has been such a beautiful opportunity to connect with so many people I love and admire without putting anyone at risk.


My heart is heavy with all of the losses we are suffering all at once. Beloved businesses (including my own) unable to operate, the loss of freedom, and especially the loss of lives. In my household, I’ve been the one to go out into the world for necessities and despite so much hand washing and disinfecting, I still hesitate to go near James for fear of what I may have breathed in or touched or contracted simply by picking up some groceries.

And yet.

And yet, I’ve found such a deep appreciation for my life in this strange time. Things that I once did to check off of a list are things I can sink into and be present for. I think I’m being reminded of how fragile life is, how much we need each other, and how hard stillness can be all at once. It makes me so grateful for the things I have long taken for granted.

This weekend, I hope you’ll find a moment to keep as your own, where you can close your eyes and just be a human. Not one in a world that seems to be collapsing. Not one that’s worried about how many rolls of toilet paper they have left. Just you, breathing in and breathing out.

Happiness

Pam Kiernan, “An Unusual Love Story”

“We’re all so much stronger than we think but you don’t know how strong you are until you know. Also, you’re just going to do it because you have to. There is no other option.”

“I truly believe happiness is not a product of the events of your life. It’s how you choose to perceive them.”

the accumulation of choices

Lisa Brennan-Jobs, Small Fry

“I heard from someone that the pattern of our breath isn’t supposed to be even, regular. Humans are not metronomes. It goes long and short, deep and shallow, and that’s how it’s supposed to go, depending each moment on what you need, and what you can get, and how filled up you are. I wouldn’t trade any part of my experience for someone else’s life, I felt then, even the moments where I’d wished I didn’t exist, not because my life was right or perfect or best, but because the accumulation of choices made had carved a path that was characteristic and distinct, down to the serif, and I felt the texture of it all around me for just a moment, familiar, like my own skin, and it was good enough.”

work

From “Bradley Cooper Is Not Really Into This Profile," Taffy Brodesser-Akner, New York Times

It was there that he met his beloved mentor, Elizabeth Kemp, who died in 2017 and to whom “A Star Is Born” is dedicated. He felt that once he met her, he was finally able to relax, for the first time in his life. He gave those classes everything he had. It reminded her of something her mentor, Elia Kazan, had once told her, which was that he’d only wanted to work with people who make their work the most important thing in their lives.

space

Viktor Frankl

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.