Isn't Everyone Tired?
When do we finally decide that fear, greed, and hatred have to stop?
Dear reader, I promise this introduction has a point. Bear with me as I continue to process (looking around me) everything.
Last weekend, I had a wonderful trip to Kansas for my grandfather’s 95th birthday. I drove nearly 1400 miles round-trip with just my parents, leaving my husband and children to fend for themselves for four days. I visited with aunts and uncles and cousins I had not seen in years. As the oldest of 23 grandchildren, I was reminded just how big of a difference there is between the tail end of Gen X and younger Millennials and older Gen Z.1 Our memories of family gatherings and places were so different. They were babies and toddlers when I graduated from high school. When they were children and then teenagers at family reunions, I was married and then a mother.
Politics talk was kept to a minimum at my family gathering, with individual views that spread across the political spectrum. I come from a long Lutheran tradition, a long conservative Lutheran tradition. While we cousins sat around the table, we reminisced about the last Christmas gathering our family had at my grandparents’ house in Junction City, Kansas, before my grandparents moved to Cheney to be closer to my aunts. My cousins remembered playing games as giggling children in both the church next door and the house. I remembered my grandmother being scandalized because her eldest granddaughter had just shared photographs from a semester in Europe, and those photos included a clear view of Michelangelo’s David. Everyone laughed because our grandmother’s reaction was about generational differences, not political positions or religious beliefs.
While I was enjoying family time, I also kept a close eye on the No Kings news across the country. My heart wanted to be in two places, and yet watching announcements of the various protests, small and large, filled me with hope. I walked to downtown Wichita from our AirBnB and ran into people leaving their local protest, which they were happy to announce had nearly 5000 people. My heart swelled with hope, silver linings on the dark clouds of other news that came out during the weekend, from assassinations in Minnesota to bombings in Iran.
I was once again struck by the surreal nature of living in a world that is simultaneously literally and metaphorically on fire, while living my normal life as if nothing is happening. My husband still works in his home office. My daughter still writes her heart out in her bedroom. My son still has sports. I still have a new school year to prepare for. We are still camping as a family and traveling as if nothing is standing in our way.
All while waiting for the collapse of everything that is holding up the fragile structures underneath.
I live in a world of split screens.
I love and deeply value people in my life who I know vote against their own interests, interests which include my own. I worship with people with whom I know I have deep theological and political disagreements. I work with people who have different life experiences and are at different phases of their teaching careers, and yet we all have a common goal of educating the next generation, even if we don’t agree on how to best get there.
I recognize the tremendous privilege in my situation. My husband and I are not in danger of being the first to lose our jobs in the face of economic collapse. We are not concerned about our legal status changing on a daily basis. If I show up at a protest, I know my white, middle-class position offers me some protection. I have decent health insurrance. My children attend good schools and they have educated parents who are looking our for them and watching for holes that need to be filled. We know enough to try to keep our kids from falling through the cracks.
And yet, my life of split screens also exposes me to a different understanding of so many things, and my grief at my loved ones turning a blind eye to the countless injustices around us often turns to anger. I know the unhealed grief gets in the way of my own relationships, anger bubbling over when I should instead be speaking truth in love. I know that some minds cannot be changed, no matter how hard I try. I know that some belief systems have to tight a grip, and for some the costs of admitting they are wrong are just too high to accept.
Living in a world occupying multiple different realities is exhausting.
I’m tired of fear of the other and of things people don’t understand and a determination to dig into camps instead of getting curious about others’ life experiences.
I’m tired of greed dressed up like a superior economic system designed to provide more opportunity, when instead an unregulated system has moved wealth into the hands of the few and taken away the ability of the many to fulfill their American Dream.
I’m tired of hatred disguised as defense of a belief system or personal freedom.
I’m tired of the celebration of ignorance and the demonization of genuine knowledge.
And then I remember that we are not unique in the march of human history. We are experiencing the growing pains of a society haunted by the ghosts of the past. We have stretched out unhealed scars, and those scars are painfully fighting back. Humans fight against change, shrink away from pain, and will often choose easy over hard. It is the story of thousands of years of existence, and old habits die hard.
Over the past couple of weeks, I finally finished the Christianity Today podcast series Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. While my parents were not fully swept up into the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s and 90s, pieces of it certainly entered our household. For example, my mom didn’t like my love for unicorns because she said she had learned they were a sign of the devil. We heard about the dangers of certain bands during youth group, because of the evil and possibly satanic messages they promoted.2 But thankfully, the more extreme sides of the panic didn’t impact my life, even as I was well aware it was around.
As I neared listening to the end of the podcast, while also watching news about people being rounded up by masked law enforcement, protests growing in towns large and small, and war looming on the horizon, I couldn’t help but ask the universe, “Aren’t people tired?”
So many of the issues we face right now are based in fear and greed. And that fear and greed breeds ignorance and contempt resulting in a whole lot of pain and regret, more often than not by those who are left sitting in the rubble.
Aren’t we tired? Don’t we want better? Don’t we want to stop seeing demons around every corner and instead see fellow humans who simply desire an existence in which they and their families can safely flourish?
I am a middle-class white woman living in Middle America. I’m a politically homeless Christian who believes in the power of liberal democracy to create a more equitable society. I am a public school teacher carefully walking a line that is made skinnier with every state legislative session. And I just want to live in a country where every human is treated with dignity and provided justice.
We don’t have to live an existence of either/or, and I don’t believe it is unreasonable to insist that we do better than live an existence driven by fear, greed, and hatred. If being an American means being guaranteed the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then it’s not just unreasonable, it should be expected.
Because I’m tired of unfilfilled promises.
This conversation after last weekend’s events was so good. I highly recommend listening.
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For reference, there is a three-year gap between my first sister and my first cousin on my father’s side. Because of that gap, for the first 15 or so years of my life, I spent most of my time either hanging out with my younger aunts and uncles (my dad is the oldest) or helping with babies.
And yet weirdly enough, MTV was never blocked from our youth group television in our church’s basement.