“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.” – Winston Churchill
I have a number of friends who are writers, and a small number of those who are historians by profession. It’s no surprise, then, that they’ve been writing a lot lately about authoritarian movements and what we can learn from them. I’m always struck by how stunned they (and we) are to find ourselves at this turning point in the world’s best-known and most admired modern democracy. Yet with all the angst and gnashing of teeth, none of them seem to get past the questions about this new political construct and certainly offer no answers. I suppose it’s because we don’t know where we and our government are going. And I also suppose we’re not going to know that for quite a long time.
However,…even accepting that our politics are spinning out of control at the moment to include the politicians who seem to be making things worse, there are about 343 million ‘We, the people’ who still live and work here, many of whom have many generations of families who have called this democracy home for centuries. I’ve recently started thinking about all of the ‘we’ who have never imagined the horrifying scenario unfolding around us now. I’ve wondered if we can survive it, unprepared as most of us have been to deal with something other than a democracy. I’ve thought about the people we see in the news who’ve always lived with the authoritarian template around them as they work to go on with their daily lives. And that’s the heart of it. They do work to continue with the things that make life daily.
I got an email recently from a young musician friend announcing the birth of her long anticipated little boy. She and her ecstatic husband named him after a famous composer. It was the perfect example of what really matters in life. So that’s how they do it. The people who survive the crushing control of an authoritarian regime celebrate the everyday things of life: relationships, families, and beautiful things that have always sustained the human spirit. We need to celebrate our relationships and connections to the natural world. I have a feeling that the more we pay attention to each other, the stronger the fabric of our world will be. And of course, it never hurts to keep a flame of hope alive so you can see where the fabric needs mending.
Thanks for reading and staying connected,
The Unblocked! Writer
Good to see another essay from you. Keep them coming. One of the things that gives me hope is how many politicians we have in this country who are fighting back and are unusually committed and passionate in try to steer us away from authoritarianism.
That’s what we all hope for. I haven’t seen much of that yet, but I’ll watch for it so I can take hope from it, too! Thanks for writing.