"I think I'm losing my mind."
If I had a dime for every time I've heard that over the course of the past eight years as I've traveled this country or perused my inbox, I'd be writing this from my expansive villa in Tuscany while U2 performs in the courtyard.
Slingshotting around America and talking to a disparate swath of its people in progressive churches, women's groups, humanist conferences, activist communities, and civic gatherings, a similar topical thread has run through so many of the conversations I've had with people: insanity (or at least, the suspicion that one has become swiftly and hopelessly afflicted with it.)
People otherwise secured in their mental faculties have looked at a world that now feels completely inverted, at former bedrock assumptions that seem to be shaking wildly, at once hard-and-fast rules for humanity that no longer seem to apply—and have determined that either they or the world has gone crazy.
More often than not, I find myself in the disquieting tension of telling people that it is most certainly not them (which of course, might actually be much easier to deal with.) Far more manageable a proposition to contend with a singular, rather than a collective mass breakdown—but this is where we are, America.
In other words: it probably isn't you. You're probably not losing your mind, though you may feel like you are.
No matter the long and meandering road we've taken to get here, the political and personal catalysts, the toxic cocktail of tribalism, fear, and religious fervor that have created it—we are now living in dangerous days for caring and clear-headed people, who are trying to stay tethered to sanity when the environment is increasingly hostile to it.
There have been many casualties of our recent national history: relational fractures and political divides and culture wars that seem too numerous to inventory, and yet worse than all of those—may be the fact that goodness has come to feel like a liability. Compassionate people have begun to believe that they are oddities; emotional outliers whose efforts to care are passé and wasted. Maybe you feel that way.
It can be really easy to let these nonsensical days get inside of you and get the best of you. Here are some suggestions on what you can do so that doesn't happen:
Engage and Withdraw. Life and activism are about the two-step dance of engaging and withdrawing—of both doing and being. The former is critical, but without the latter, you will be consumed by all the need and dysfunction and pain around you. Whether for you, peace is found in prayer, meditation, silence, solitude, or in nature—step away from the fray and recenter, so you can quiet your mind, refresh your body, and recalibrate your brain.
Get on social media. You have invaluable resources that those who came before you have never had. You have limitless access to ideas and to people, so lean into that as long as it helps. Stay informed so that you understand the complexities of the issues and the gravity of the moment—and find your tribe of affinity that isn't bound by your geography, so that you don't feel alone in your grief and your outrage.
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