I’ve been meditating a bit on Thich Nhat Hanh’s memoir, At Home in the World, which covered his early childhood through his days organizing fellow monks for Vietnamese liberation, to his exile and founding of Plum Village.
In one chapter, Thay (the Vietnamese term for teacher, what we call Thich Nhat Hanh or any respected Buddhist leader) talks about the plight of the boatpeople and how the Singaporean government had a particularly harsh policy of pushing refugees back out to sea, condemning them to statelessness and death. In one scenario, eight hundred people were in crisis at sea and state governments refused to offer aid to Thay in order to save these people. Thay wrote:
In this extremely difficult situation, I realized that I needed to put into practice the words “If you want peace, peace is with you immediately.” I was surprised to find myself quite calm, not afraid or worried about anything. My worries had disappeared — it was a truly peaceful state of mind.
And yet there were more problems than it seemed possible to solve in just twenty-four hours. Even in a whole lifetime, many of us complain that there is not enough time. How could so much be done in a mere twenty-four hours? I vowed that if I could not have peace at that moment, I would never be able to have peace. If I could not be peaceful in the midst of danger, then the kind of peace I might have in simpler times is meaningless. As long as I live, I will never forget those seconds of sitting meditation, those breaths, and those mindful steps through the night.
This recognition gave Thay both the clarity and compassion to save eight hundred refugees by the morning. I tear up and weep, thinking about how many times he has done this in his lifetime, and for me he is truly one of the revolutionaries I study with diligence in the pursuit of liberation from our cycles of suffering. I want the clear-mindnedness he has held throughout his life in order to alleviate the suffering of other beings.
Prison abolitionist Mariame Kaba also says that “Hope is a discipline.” I put these ideas in conversation today as I reflect on the relief I feel that Trump and all he embodies lost both a popular vote and an electoral vote in the United States to Joe Biden and his history-making vice president-elect Kamala Harris. And I recognize that those wins do not paint a whole picture.
I am not necessarily relieved that Biden is president, nor Harris Vice-President. Regardless of whatever numbers are reflected in the US in these votes, they do not reflect the global consciousness, as friends from places like Finland and India and Singapore and Sweden texted me their concern, anxieties, and anger that the United States was so out-of-touch.
They do not reflect the pain and grief felt throughout the globe for as long as the United States is not held accountable for its entitlement, its self-centeredness, its myth of exceptionalism, its devastating, climate-destroying imperialism.
They do not reflect the detachment nonvoters in this country have had to practice in order to survive the horrific violence of this nation founded on settler-colonial genocide and slavery.
They do not reflect the exhaustion that Black, Indigenous, disabled, queer women and survivors had to grit their teeth and bite their tongue despite relentless abuse from supposed allies to organize against their explicit enemies. What they had to endure and persist through to unseat the Abuser-In-Chief who sowed the seeds of chaos, fomented white supremacy, and sat back while those seeds grew and he waited to profit off of whatever took root.
But I think that to focus on symbolism and representation — what does this win/loss mean, and to whom — is to continue feeding into a hierarchical system that will continue to enable and embolden the very things we want to dismantle.
Biden and Harris may not mean to me individually what they mean to others. If I’m honest, Biden and Harris do not mean much to me outside of a lessening of the boot on my neck these past four years. For example, I am not particularly desperate or delighted for representation to have a woman for VP in the United States when I also know Jacinda Ardern and the New Zealand foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta exist as women in modern government leadership. Or when I dig into US History and see the extraordinary leadership of women like Ida B. Wells, Ella Baker, Yuri Kochiyama, or Grace Lee Boggs. But I am also an adult woman with a sizeable about of history and contemporary context behind me.
So I will be delighted just the same when a young girl looks at Kamala Harris and feels a sense of hope. Because I remember when I was a young girl and delighted about Michelle Kwan (I feel some amusement as I reflect that she has gone from Olympic figure skater to Biden’s director of surrogates) as an Asian face on my television, and I was lucky to have that hope cultivated throughout the years, nuanced and deepened. That to be like Michelle Kwan did not mean that I too needed to be an Asian ice skater, but that I too could be recognized for my effort, my skills, my passion, and my persistence. That no matter how many times people would choose to not see me for who I am and what I could contribute, it was possible — it is always possible — to be seen.
I suppose what I mean to say is that hope does not lie in the symbolism of those in power, but in those moments of joy wherever they sprout in the people around us. If Trump sowed the seeds of despair in order to reap the rewards, then we too can plant seeds of possibility tonight and every night hereafter, and reap those rewards for all of us.
I know tonight that many people will feel anguish and concern that if people give in to hope as just a naïve giving into one’s emotions, one’s desire to escape into a fantasy world, that we will lose sight of all the work left to do. I know tonight that many people will prove them right, believing that the work is over just because they did the bare minimum of civic engagement, hoping that doing the most about complaining and weeping would cover the rest. We are already fighting about misconceptions and giving into our base fears about tomorrow. We are already pointing fingers. We are already making mistakes. And we will keep doing so.
Which is why it is all the more important we practice mindfulness, practice hope, and be in our power and our joy. To plant many, many, many seeds of possibility.
So I go back to Thich Nhat Hanh’s words: “If you want peace, peace is with you immediately.” Tonight in my peace I see us as imperfect humans with many problems to solve. Things we will not be able to fix in twenty-four hours, four years, or even a lifetime.
But when I see millions of people dancing in the street. When I know some people expected to die without ever having seen a Black woman in high office in this country witness a new reality right before their very eyes. When I see people fighting with each other and trust that they will live tomorrow to fight with each other another day. When I know people the world over are taking a deep breath and feeling like they can be in their body again, even if just for a moment.
I really believe we can create more and more of these moments in the days to come, for every living being on this earth.
