It’s exhausting to give a damn, isn’t it?
To be a person of compassion in a time and place when compassion is in such great demand?
To wake up every day in days like these, and push back against predatory politicians, toxic systems, human rights atrocities, acts of treason, and spiritual leadership failures?
The volume and the relentlessness of the threats can be wearying.
You may have noticed.
But it’s more than that.
You’re not only burdened with these sprawling systemic sicknesses and political realities, but the people within them.
You’re carrying the names and the faces and the lives of specific human beings who are in peril right now; people whose stories you read, listen to, know, and live inside; people you fiercely love, even if you have never met them.
And day after day, these legions of sorrows begin to take up residence in your body. They accumulate upon your shoulders, in your clenched jaw, in your elevated heart rate, in the headache that never goes away, and in the knot in your stomach that returns every morning when you check your phone, turn on the news, step out into your community, or walk into the kitchen, and are reminded again of how sideways it’s all gone.
And perhaps worst of all, is how many people, both at a distance and very close to you, just don’t seem to give a damn; how the pain of other people simply doesn’t register within them anymore.It seems like fewer and fewer people are capable of even a base-level empathy for the suffering around them, and you’re seriously considering joining their ranks, because of how f*****g tired you are of feeling it all.
And though I don’t have any business doing so, I’m asking you to keep feeling it all.
I’m not sure why you’re reading this, but it’s probably because you’re a damn-giver; because the wounds of the world cause you injury. As a result, these words likely find you pissed off, disconnected, isolated, worn out, and on the verge of a breakdown because of how few people are as addled by the need around them as you are.
Whether you’re an activist or a minister or a parent or a caregiver, or just a citizen of the planet who is moved by other people’s suffering, you likely feel the immeasurable heaviness of these days. Sure, speed and activity can mask it for a while, but if you stop long enough, the reality of the fatigue catches up to you, and you can measure the toll it’s all taken on you.
I want you to measure it. I want you to reckon with how tired you are. I want you to hear yourself exhale with the heavy sighs of someone who feels the full weight of this broken, jagged place.
Notice the bruises and the sores, and give them your attention.Extend some of that compassion you’re so willing to extend to the world to yourself.Take time to step away from the fray and the fight. They will still be there when you return, and you’ll be better able to face them.
Friend, I know you’re exhausted. If you’re not exhausted right now, your empathy is busted.But I also know that you aren’t alone.Tens of millions of people are as tired as you are right now.We, too, live in disbelief at how callous so many people around us have become.We, too, are incredulous, witnessing our elected leaders and parents and neighbors and favorite aunts abandon any semblance of gentleness toward their neighbors.And we, too, feel the fatigue of believing we’re doing this damn-giving alone.
You are in good company, so be encouraged.Fight like hell to keep your heart soft, even while so many people have become hardened.Yes, the world is upside-down right now, but we can make it right, one beautiful act of decency at a time.Get some rest and keep going.The world needs people like you.
Blessed are the damn-givers, for they will right-side the world.
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