a pile of sorries

Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in. When I was

in college, I read Ntozake Shange's 'for colored girls who

have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf." And it

transformed the way I thought about theater, the way I thought

about public writing. It felt more like my writing, not that

my writing is as good as hers, but it felt more like my writing

than almost anything I'd ever read in academia. And it felt

for the first time like, maybe I could have a place in

literature, in writing, in poetry, in the creative lexicon

of the world. And then I shoved that feeling as far down as it

could go, because I was at a high powered liberal arts

college and everybody knows that poets don't make money. But

somewhere in there is a segment, a piece, a piece of the piece

called "sorry," a stanza called "sorry." And it's about how you

can keep your sorry. Because she can't use them anymore. She's

got too many of them. They're everywhere. And they're

meaningless. You should really go find that segment of that

show. It's gorgeous. And I've been thinking about sorry, and

shrugs, and thoughts and prayers, and the helplessness

that so many of us are feeling right now. And the way that we

want to be present with each other, at least, and so we do

this thing where we like, heart react or care react, or offer a

virtual hug, or... and, and I'm not saying that presence is, is

not supportive, because many people- religious, academic,

psychological people- have studied that and being

witnessed, having someone be present with you, all of these

things, these are elements of pastoral care. They're elements

of psychological care. There's clearly benefit to being held in

community or in another human beings presence, when you're

going through something hard. That's, it's not nothing. And

yet, sometimes it really isn't enough. And sometimes it drives

the spike of isolation, even deeper, the spike of

hopelessness even deeper, because, because what are you

going to do with sorry? What are you going to do with I see you?

or I hear you? or I feel you? or-- even that's valid, like:

thank you for acknowledging my expression of distress. And

also, what do I do with that? That's not going to pay my rent.

And sometimes, that's all people want. You know, there's this

whole joke about how men are fixers, and women are like

presence-ers, and the number of unnecessarily gendered nonsenses

in that stereotype is mind blowing. And I can't get into it

here, or I'll get mad, and I'll talk for three hours, and nobody

wants to be here for three hours. But what we do know is

that some people do jump straight to fixing some of us

are more solvers, and some of us are more accompany-ers. And yet,

in certain moments in certain places in life and time and

history, the

solvers run out of solutions, like we don't we don't know the

answers, we don't know, right this minute, what we can

actually do, what will actually affect useful change. Or we know

what would if we could get enough people to do it, but we

haven't been able to get enough people to do it. And so even if

we know that a certain number of legal changes, or administrative

changes, or regulatory changes would halt climate change, we

can't seem to get the right people together to do it. Even

if we know what would keep the legal system of the United

States from making a mockery of itself., we can't quite figure

out how to do it. And as a result, our faith in ourselves

and each other and the system we're in starts to fall apart

and so even fewer people than usual are willing to offer

solutions, partial solutions, support of that kind, because

the problems feel insurmountable and insoluble and instead

there's this pulling back. And this "I'm sorry, I hear you."

And then silence. And you know what? That doesn't work. Like,

we can't, we can't just pile up sorries around somebody and

expect it to do something. We we've got to, we've got to come

up with a better answer than that. And I don't mean, you

know, substitute hugs for sorries, I mean, we need to

actually come up with something, to do something of ourselves

that we can offer. And when we're depleted, that seems

impossible. It seems impossible. And for some people, prayer is

doing a thing. And for others of us, we have an experience of the

universe, that prayer is less intercedent than most people

would like. And if you don't believe in that kind of

intercedent, sacred experience, then you're unlikely to be able

to feel it as support by itself. And so that's not really

helpful. But, but more to the point when somebody is asking,

when somebody is asking for help by describing a problem, it can

be useful to ask them if they would like a listening ear, or

if they would like solutions, or if they would like somebody to

get in the blanket fort with them and shut up. There's a

great dinosaur, I think it's a Dinosaur Cartoon. No, it's not a

Dinosaur Cartoon. It's a different cartoon. There's a

great cartoon that goes around periodically, of you know, well,

are you feeling sad? Yes. Well, you know, would you like to

raaaarr about it? Or would you like to, what would you like to

do about it, and the person like, runs off a string of I'd

like to do this, and then this and then this, and then they,

the other person says, okay, and starts doing those things with

them. It's good to ask, it's good to know what the other

person wants. I'm not saying offer advice where it's not

wanted. But I am saying when someone says to you, I need

help. Says to you, I need ideas, Says to you, I need something. I

need something specific. I need food, I need rent money. We all

have power. I know I keep saying that on this show. But it's

true. We all have power. We all have resources, we haven't

thought about how to tap. And in the... in the idea that you're

supposed to, you know, provide support to the person who's

hurting the most. And then if that distresses you, go get

support somewhere else. You can tap your network for ideas for

how to help the person in the middle of the circle who's

having the problem. You can say, Gosh, this person needs rent

money, how do we get them rent money, this person needs a

wheelchair, how do we get them a wheelchair. In my world, so

often, the problems are that concrete. It's five hunder bucks

between this person and mobility. It's five thousand

bucks between this person and mobility. Let's get them what

they need. I don't have five thousand bucks, but I have a lot

of friends. And they have friends. And maybe everybody

will pass it around. And if we get a thousand people to throw

five bucks in the hat, guess what? We've gotten this person

their mobility? And yes, we shouldn't have to do that. Yes,

we should have better public health services, everything,

everything but okay, but here we are, right? And this person

needs mobility now. And so how are we going to get them

mobility now. And other times, the questions are harder. Other

times the questions are more complex. Other times, the costs

are harder or their ongoing, which is harder to fundraise

for, because people like to give to something they feel like they

can complete or win, much more than they like to feel like

they're giving to an infinite bucket of need. But the problem

is humans are kind of infinite buckets of need. We all are,

we're just variously blessed by what we have access to and how

we can solve the problem.

We need to start piling up sorries at the feet of people

who are having problems that are concrete and solvable. And

instead, we need to provide whatever we can provide.

Sometimes what we can provide is in our heads, sometimes what we

can provide is in our houses or in our yard, sometimes what we

can provide is a refrigerator for someone who's about to

become houseless, but needs their insulin stored properly. I

almost did that for someone once that person died some years

later, possibly because of a power outage and a lack of

refrigeration. And I just wasn't in touch with them at that time.

And I didn't know they needed it and I don't know if they asked

for it again. Sometimes it's very concrete needs. Sometimes

it's complicated needs. Sometimes the thing that is

needed more than anything else is the ability to look at the

situation from outside of it. Or the ability to say, Listen, it's

okay to spend this money on this. Or if you need to spend

this money on this, let's talk about how you're going to find

it. Let's talk about how we're going to find it. You're not

alone. You don't have to raise the money alone. You don't have

to find the accommodations alone. You don't have to solve

the problem alone. We'll work on it together. We've got you. It's

not you. And it's not just you and your nuclear family. It's

everybody that all of us can muster. And together, we're

going to solve this problem for you. Do I wish that together we,

as the United States, would solve problems? Yes, yes, I do.

I wish we had universal basic income. I wish we had universal

health care. I wish we had bodily autonomy for people with

uteruses. But we don't. Right now we don't. And that doesn't

mean that people in those situations should have to solve

those problems alone. It means that we stop throwing a sorry,

at the foot of the statue and walking away and instead...

Instead, we find something to do. We find something to do. We

ask them what they need. If they don't know. We help them

brainstorm through it. We help them figure it out. Because when

the people you ask for help, act helpless, you start to believe