Impermanence and the Buddhist Nun

Years ago, I used to attend Buddhist meditations in Mount Vernon, WA, where a nun in robes with a buzz cut told us how she wakes up each day and checks the news to remind herself of the suffering in the world. She then would notice her lovely life with nourishing food, a bed, companionship, flower gardens, coffee, and cakes, and feel grateful for all she had. Afterward, she’d set an intention to do what she could with her day to improve the lives of those she could within her sphere of influence.

Tonight, I thought about how we don’t own each other and barely own ourselves in bodies that are temporary. Yes, we will all die. But what we do with our lives while we are alive and how we treat others is what matters. I thought of how I flew away on a jet to Mexico and then came back to my little house waiting next to the sea for me. I thought of my dad covered in bruises from blood thinners and work ethic, and my mom lonely on Memorial Day when picnic plans didn’t come to fruition.

I thought of sitting in my hot tub with my current boyfriend, crying while telling him about a dinner with a boyfriend thirty years ago. We carry pebbles of pain in pockets deep within ourselves. This is where empathy also lives.

Last week, I took homemade asian rolls to my book club and listened to talks about trips on ships, a middle schooler being fat-shamed, a high schooler who ran away from home, a layoff, a lawsuit, and a nude beach. I listened to women tell the stories of their lives, and I listened to their pain.

I thought of my daughter crying last week while I held her and told her I trust her to pick good people to be in her life. She is tough and independent, and when she asks for my approval, I know it is needed.

I thought of the wild roses behind my sauna blooming and dropping petals like pink paper snow. I thought of how we require grief to love things fully.

Deporting the Moms

I’m a white middle-income mom checking my daughter’s college fund on my phone, then listening to her talk about what new hoodie she wants (yellow adventure vs pink heart) on her phone, while simultaneously horrified as I then watch online a mother pleading in Spanish that her children are in the school in a desperate plea to see them as ICE hauls her away. My daughter points out the travesty that the clothing manufacturer is going to release the pink hoodie before the yellow one, and I remind her that children are starving in Gaza.

I struggle to reconcile our safety and general security, and my child’s sense of entitlement, against the lack of protection for another mother and child. I cannot make sense of it, because they exist simultaneously as if at odds with one another. I conceptually understand that two disparate worlds can exist, yet I don’t know why anyone would want them to exist. The mom with two kids in school does not need to be hauled away to improve the lives of anyone else. It is not justice served.

The stories keep coming of women holding babies and children crying as their mothers and fathers are hauled away. This is not a world I want, nor should anyone want.

“Carol,” a 45-year-old woman from Hong Kong who’d built a life in the U.S. and worked in a cafe in rural Trump-supporting Missouri, was loved by the locals. To their horror, she was recently detained by ICE. These Trump supporters didn’t mean Carol when they said deport the illegals, and now they’re having to rectify what’s currently happening to real people in their lives with what they voted for. They’re wearing T-shirts that say “Bring Carol Home,” but likely, Ming Li Hui, this soccer mom known as Carol, won’t be coming home. She’ll be deported. And yes, it’s your fault.

I saw a sign last week that said This will stop when enough of us say Stop. There is not yet enough of us. People watch their TikTok feeds of cats and try to get their kids off to school while human rights erode. It will take the Right to say enough before this will stop, and by then, thousands of lives will be ruined. If you voted for Trump, understand that this doesn’t stop until you say stop loud and clear to your representatives en masse. You started this and you must stop it.

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of The Dead

I wake in the morning and listen to NPR news while I brush my teeth and ineptly apply mascara in silent, resigned horror. I notice blisters on my hands where I burnt myself loading logs into the wood-fired hot tub. My life is easy, and yet I feel wrecked half the time from living it. I’m self-soothing, living under autocratic rule by climbing into the emotional intelligence of a man who breaks the internet with the sleeves cut out of his shirt, coupled with basic kindness for humans. There will be a point where my entire Instagram feed is just Pedro Pascal eating sandwiches, dancing, and saying kind things. Today I watched a video where he is seen reading a book (shirtless on the beach) called Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, which he describes as a murder mystery and calls it “a woman’s crime and punishment,” and now I must read the book. To escape within the wormhole that Pedro Pascal escaped within is a double escape.

The Big Beautiful Bill

When citizens at a town hall in Iowa pressed Republican Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa for answers on why she was supporting cuts to Medicaid and food stamps when it would result in people dying, she said flippantly, “We all are going to die.” Yes, she then talked about how she doesn’t want to see aid going to people who don’t qualify, like undocumented immigrants, but now we’re really at the heart of which lives matter and which don’t.

As someone who works in the EMS industry and who used to assist veterans with healthcare benefits, I know people refuse transport because they are choosing between staying housed, groceries, and healthcare. As a society, we’re actively choosing to allow people to die when we don’t provide the basic financial resources for food and healthcare to everyone. I don’t care who has a job or who doesn’t. People’s lives are far more complicated and burdened once you dig into the real issues. I don’t care who is here without proper documentation. Everyone deserves to eat and live. These cuts to fundamental basic human care are being put into place to offset 4.5 trillion in tax breaks, mainly to the wealthy, while leaving our friends, neighbors, and relatives in peril.

Healthcare is a fundamental human right that everyone should be eligible for. Men like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos exist with more wealth than any human should amass. There is plenty to go around, and the problem is that it’s not going around. The poor white person or the poor brown person trying to survive is not the problem. Donald Trump and his billionaires are the problem, and they are destroying our futures person by person, cut by cut, while telling the masses he’s saving them money. He’s not. He’s killing those viewed as disposable while lining the pockets of the already too rich.

According to KFF, CBO estimates that changes in Medicaid from the Energy & Commerce reconciliation bill are expected to trigger two types of health insurance loss. First, an estimated 10.3 million people are expected to lose Medicaid. Second, an estimated 1.4 million people are expected to lose coverage provided to immigrants regardless of immigration status through programs financed entirely by the states.

The mom using food stamps to feed her kids is not your enemy. The elderly man using Medicaid for his insulin is not your enemy. The veteran trying to stay off the streets is not your enemy. But you are becoming theirs when you do nothing about this legislation.

But What Can I Do Rather than Just Watch Pedro Pascal Dance?

It’s okay to tend your dahlias, enjoy your morning latte, plan your trip to Italy, and sink into Pedro, but you can also pick a couple of things that will help bring change and stop what’s happening in our country from becoming a foregone conclusion.

1. You can call your Republican lawmakers to tell them you won’t be voting for them if they support this bill. This is an even stronger argument if you are a Republican in a Red State.

2. You can talk to your friends and neighbors about why deporting the people in your communities who are working hard to survive and have meaningful lives isn’t making your communities better. You can ask them to join you in speaking out against these deportations. You can ask them to call their representatives.

3. You can go to peaceful protests. Yes, they don’t “do” anything in the moment. But they show numbers and movement toward change.

4. If you are overwhelmed like I am about the daily barrage of injustices, you can pick one or two areas of oppression you are passionate about and focus on just those to support. Give a few hours a week to speaking out, writing opinion pieces, and volunteering where possible. Pick areas like the environment, veterans assistance, immigration, Medicare, food stamps programs, support of Ukraine, support for ending genocide in Palestine, abortion rights, free press, and higher education. So many of these are seeing cuts and attacks and need people to stand up and say NO. They need funding, support, and your time.

5. Don’t shut out your friends and family who have different views from you unless they are actively engaged in harming you. When I was in the Army I was surrounded by people who believed in different things than me. However, I know my being there and voicing my views did change opinions slowly over time. Even if you change one mind, that mind goes on to change others around them and so on. Be the voice who is there when they are ready to hear you.

6. Divest from the Oligarchs. Stop giving them your dollars. Drop your Amazon subscriptions. Buy books from bookshop.org . Sell your stock from companies that support this Administration’s policies. Shop small and local as much as you possibly can. (#6 was an edit from a reminder from Beth Anderson to hit the purse.)

7. End your day watching Pedro Pascal. Honestly, it helps.

Digging up Fires to Put Them Out

I have a friend who works with me in the fire service who once explained that in wildland firefighting, they have to dig down to find the fires burning underground and then put them out. On the surface, you can’t see the fires, he explained, but they are in the roots of the trees and the ground below and can go on burning below the surface, spreading, and igniting all around you. Living in America right now feels generally normal. You go to the store, the cinema, and soccer practice, and life is going on, but beneath the surface, little fires are burning everywhere, consuming us piece by piece. We are on fire at our very roots, and it may take us years of digging up each hot spot and putting out every one of these fires before we can stop living in fear of what’s lurking below and waiting to consume us. And so we must keep digging until the work is done, spade by spade.

Leave a comment