Everything is f*cked. But also, everything is fine.
Yesterday, I watched a video of a woman with a PhD being dragged from her seat at a public meeting and zip tied by three unidentified private citizens while the sheriff videoed the incident and the speaker heckled and belittled her for, “...acting like a little girl.”
"Woman zip-tied at Idaho Town Hall by unidentified security force."
That's what the headline said.
"Now is the time for self care."
That's what the meme said just below it.
Then the very stern bearded man on a Facebook ad said…
"There has never been a better time to be an entrepreneur."
We are losing our collective minds.
Our collective sanity.
Our collective…
Right now is a mess.
And no, now is not the best time to be an entrepreneur, Mr. Bearded ad man. And your unearned, tone-deaf bravado makes me hope you get beard lice.
Is that a thing?
I hope it is.
I don't want to be a person who hopes for beard lice when I look at a Facebook ad, but here we are.
I guess if you are willing to assertively pretend everything is fine and money will save us, sure.
Now is your moment.
I guess if you have enough money to survive this, and have no problem sucking other people dry by leveraging their 100% valid fears for their own survival and existential dread, sure.
Now is your moment.
I guess if you were sitting in the audience at that town hall meeting in Idaho, laughing as one of your neighbors was dragged away by private security, sure.
Now is your moment.
The thing that sticks with me is that, as they dragged her across the floor, the camera caught that she was wearing tan heels.
Tan heels that were peeled off of her feet as they dragged her.
Tan heels that a bystander dutifully gathered as they yanked on her arms.
They didn’t help her. But they made sure they picked up her shoes.
See, she wasn’t in tightly laced, “I’m going to a protest and might get pepper-sprayed or have to run for my life,” boots.
She was in heels.
Tan, classy, expensive-looking, “I expect to be taken seriously as an educated and stable member of society, looking to exercise my constitutional rights at a public forum,” heels.
The fact that they were in the Pantone color of the year is going to keep me up at night.
So no, bearded man. I don't really feel like being an entrepreneur right now. I'm tired just thinking about staying alive most days. Really, I mostly want to light money (as a whole concept) on fire, strip naked, and run screaming for the hills.
And yet, like so many of you, I remain a leggings-clad, firmly planted, work-from-home CEO. I still love what I do, and still want to help the people outside this madness that care about doing business without hurting others.
We are people with kids. We are daughters. Sons. We have people who depend on us for their care and feeding. People who depend on us to stay sane and grounded.
People who depend on us to stay in business.
But how do you dream big when the biggest possible dream seems to be to just survive this moment?
How can we be good people who dream big when the most vulnerable among us are experiencing unthinkable injustice? atrocities? victimization? there isn’t a word for it.
How do we keep selling things?
I wish we could stop.
I’m tired of this capitalist ride. It smells like barf and shame and the tears of those too quiet to be heard and I would like to get off.
But I can’t. We can’t. Somehow, we have to keep buying and selling things so we can keep eating and surviving.
But maybe we at least stop pretending it’s business as usual?
And we DEFINITELY do not start leveraging madness as a marketing ploy.
I mean, let’s be honest… how long until someone starts selling a course on how to best use AI to survive in a detainment camp?
I wish that was as crazy as it sounds.
So what do we do instead? How do we sell things when selling feels like dragging a cheese grater over an already raw nervous system?
We help each other in whatever way we can.
Whatever. Way. We. Can.
The answer will not be the same for everyone.
Your context and capacity is different from mine.
Some of us might re-evaluate our pricing structures to make them as sustainable and accessible as possible.
Some of us might give our time and our support to others whenever we are able - whether they are paying us for it or not. But we also ask for money from those who can afford it because we need to survive too.
Some of us might make a hundred calls a day.
Or take to the streets in protest.
Or quit our jobs and start a resistance.
The actions we take will be varied.
But there are things we must not do, too.
We must not become financial or energetic martyrs.
And we must not claim a moral high ground.
There is no high ground.
The flood has come for us all.
So we work to help pull each other from the waters that rage all around us.
We recognize that no meme has ever changed someone’s mind.
No finger wagging has ever changed hearts.
No smug, sarcastic superiority has ever made the world a better place. (They’ll have to pry that one from my cold dead hands - but I’m trying.)
And no tone-deaf high-pressure Facebook ads have ever been vital to our survival.
Not when women are dragged from public spaces by unidentified men.
When that happens, we work with our multitudes. We remember we can, in fact, balance competing priorities because we have to. We remember that none of us are monoliths.
There’s a part of me who operates in cold strategy. She’s impatient and unforgiving and full of stubborn resolve.
And there’s a part of me who throws pubescent tantrums when faced with opposition.
And there’s a part that is soft and yielding and wise. She craves compromise and empathy.
And there’s a part of me who always knows what to do. What’s right. She is perhaps the biggest part of what makes me good at my work in the world. I can always find the right way forward that aligns with my values.
And I have no idea what to do.
The discomfort of that is intense.
As it should be.
This is not a moment for polarized certainty.
But it is also not the moment for paralysis.
This is a moment for us all to remember that we ALL contain the capacity for more than just one conceptual path forward.
Because this is a moment of unprecedented complexity.
We have to meet it with equal nuance.
Because moments of deep and profound complexity attract and amplify two types:
Those who are understandably desperate for answers, clarity, validation, and safety.
And those who are willing to sell it to them.
Be wary of those who are selling answers. Be wary of those who seem sure of anything right now.
No one has any idea what the right way to meet this moment is. No one knows how to face the onslaught of our rights, our communities, and our culture being torn from the fibers of our tender souls.
The reason why no one stood up for the woman in that meeting was because we are all afraid. Afraid we might make it worse. Afraid it would escalate. Afraid we would be next. Afraid we will do the wrong thing. Afraid of the fact that exceptionally stupid people with guns are killing people for less every single day. Afraid what little we are clinging to to hold our lives together could be dragged away by unidentified men in black tactical gear.
I wish I could say that I would have stood up.
But the truth is that I wouldn’t have been at the meeting in the first place. I have a little girl. And we have a very small family. She has very few people she can count on in this world. And when I balance fighting for her future with my physical body or staying home and holding her tight in the safety of our four walls - as far from danger as I can get? ‘Right’ gets a lot more complicated.
We are all doing some version of this calculus in one way or another. And then judging each other for caring or acting in the right or wrong ways.
I understand why no one stood up. And I’m equally devastated by that comprehension. The erosion of our collective willingness to risk everything for collective good was not a quick process. It’s been decades of tiny cuts - slicing away at our sense of strength and stability. Slicing away at our empathy. Slicing away at the balance between righteousness and threats to what we hold dear.
There are no right answers here.
No right actions.
The moment when putting yourself in harm’s way for something bigger, or fleeing our home for the sake of safety, is a lot harder to recognize than most of us would like.
And most of us might never know where our line was until we can see it in the rear view.
And it’s too late.
Maybe now is your moment after all.