Today and tomorrow and the day after

When Trump won in 2016, I had just graduated from Barnard, an all women’s liberal arts college in NYC, where feminism and critical thinking were commonplace in both classrooms and parties.

While educated, I was naive about the world—especially on theories of social change and politics.

The morning Trump won I had to fly to Chicago to speak at a conference on the benefits of mindfulness meditation. It was my largest speaking opportunity to date—a crowd of ~400 people—and I was wholly unprepared to speak to a room so large, let alone the day after the election.

I remember feeling both a state of shock and despair. Jumping into a cab at 5am bleary eyed to the airport, feeling an uncanny sense of unease, fear even, of the people who lined up next to me in security.

Who were these people?

Was my sense of America actually radically different from reality?

I spent the remainder of the day locked up in a WeWork conference room writing, rewriting, memorizing a speech about something, literally anything, that could be meaningful to say.

What could I possibly say that would make this moment feel better?

I don’t remember what I ended up saying or if it made a difference.

What I do remember is holding my grief, drawing confidence and strength in my own buddha nature, and showing up to what I felt was ultimately needed in that moment.

I remember seeing a crowd of 400 strangers sit tall in their seats, shoulders wide, close or lower their eyes and breathe in unison. I remember a felt-sense of unbreakable connection, albeit shaky and tender, in a moment of moral and political collapse and confusion.

This happened less than 24 hours after Trump became our 45th president.

Even amidst this momentary tenderness, I’d be lying if I said the past 8 years haven’t challenged my Buddhist worldview of compassion and interdependence.

The failures of both the Trump and Biden administrations—specifically this past year of genocide in Gaza, and now Trump’s reelection—have rattled my sense of basic goodness and revealed to me the depth of greed, aggression, and delusion in our society.

The reality is—I am now less naive about the world, social change, and politics.

And while my heart is more withered—my love and audacity have taken on a deeper, more radical sense of unending will and confidence.

I’m no longer interested in telling people about the benefits of mindfulness meditation.

I am now focused on how Buddhist practice helps us tap into an indestructible sense of faith to build the world anew, even when it feels entirely hopeless.

How the dharma can expand both our spiritual and political imaginations in tandem.

How Buddhist practice can spiritually sustain movement activists, parents, students, educators, everyone and anyone to organize and mobilize themselves to build power.

How to trust the merit in planting wholesome karmic seeds, even without immediate results, because we trust that they will ripen well beyond our lifetime.

Last night while the results started to roll in, I sat in bed reading activist and organizer Grace Lee Boggs’ book The Next American Revolution. I’ll leave you with this—Grace, after 70 years of radical organizing, at the age of 95 shares in regards to her husband, Jimmy:

“As Jimmy Boggs used to remind us, revolutions are made out of love for people and for place. He often talked about loving America enough to change it. 'I love this country,' he used to say, 'not only because my ancestors' blood is in the soil but because of what I believe it can become.' Love isn't just something you feel. It's something you do everyday when you go out and pick the paper and bottles scattered the night before on the corner, when you stop and talk to a neighbor, when you argue passionately for what you believe in with whoever will listen, when you call a friend to see how they're doing, when you write a letter to the newspaper, when you give a speech and give 'em hell, when you never stop believing that we can all be more than what we are. In other words, Love isn't about what we did yesterday; it's about what we do today and tomorrow and the day after.”

Let this moment of despair open you up. Tear you down. And let’s rebuild a spiritual imagination and strength tied up in the painful, necessary truth of the work to be done today and tomorrow and the day after.

In love, in grief, in solidarity,
Adriana

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Three pieces I read the past day that you might also find helpful

Now we fight for the future by Josh P. Hill

To Transform Our Trauma, We Must Nurture Movements for Change by Kelly Hayes

The Election Won’t Save Us. What Will? by Joe Mayall

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