Winter takes its time to come but when it does, it does so all at once. I head out for a swim on the first freezing morning and watch the sky turn from a dusky pink to a bright blue, as the tips of the trees get doused in gold when the sun finally makes its way over the top. I had hoped that the cold would ease the anxiety that’s been creeping up more and more but it doesn’t really. While I’m in the water, the cold shuts everything else out and I am temporarily suspended, detached from the world and anchored to this moment. But soon after, my fingers and toes still numb from the cold, the anxiety creeps back up my spine and around my chest.
What do you write when there is so much horror in the world? And instead of us coming together to stand up to evil, we are all at each other’s throats, seemingly unable to hold more than one thought or willing to dig into the complexity of millennia of history, politics and learned hate. The world over, Jews and Muslims are more afraid than ever and the lesson that the world swore it had learnt, the lesson to “Never Again”, seems to come with a lot of asterisks attached in the minds of politicians.
We live in a world where we don’t see the ramifications of what we do to others because we don’t live with them. […] If we could see one another’s pain and empathize with one another, it would never be worth it to us to commit the crimes in the first place.
— Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood
Initially, I wanted to look back over this year but I soon realized that most of my key memories are from the first few months. After about June, it all just merges into a blur. I’ve tried to think but I can’t even really remember anything I’ve done in August. I still remember the hopes I had at midsummer, of all the things that I hoped could be by the time the winter solstice rolled around but now it’s only three weeks away and that hope seems more like a very vivid dream than actual reality.
In a way, however, this latest iteration of a long-running conflict brings together all of the issues I have been thinking about this year. Those two weeks in and around Cape Town have lastingly impacted how I view the world. I knew what to expect. I knew about the labour and human rights violations but seeing them and realising how capitalism requires us to simply accept them, made me so angry and appalled that I can still sense that feeling fizzing away inside me.
When you live in Europe or you’re white and live in a former British colony, it can be easy to believe that we’re over colonialism, slavery or racism. After all, it was ended, abolished, solved with the posting of a few black squares in 2020. But in reality, you don’t even have to dig deep to see the truth, to see that the impacts still reverberate and shape our lives everyday. From the way our foods are produced to the way the brunt of the climate crisis is hitting those who have contributed to it the least, all of it goes back to the way white people from Europe thought they had the right to impose their will and power over Black and Brown people around the globe.
“Denial is so much easier than looking inward, or backward, or forward; so much easier than change. But denial needs narratives, cover stories, and that is what conspiracy culture is providing.”
― Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World
Anna recently wrote beautifully about feeling small and how, depending on the circumstances, this can feel either freeing or like a cage. I can see how, in the face of so much violence and so many challenges, it feels almost impossible to imagine that one person can make a difference. But elections are often decided by a few hundred votes, while the largest majority is held by all the people who stayed home, thinking their vote wouldn’t make a difference. Imagine now if all the people who wanted to make a difference, who see the horrors of the world and no longer accept them, actually acted upon that impulse.
Our power lies in all of us coming together and taking small actions, for small actions add up to big movements. You could sign a petition and then share it. You could read up on something, watch a video or follow someone who uses their influence not to sell things but to educate. You could talk to your families over the holidays and share with them what you have learnt. You could amplify the voices of those who are usually not heard in your circle. You could donate to a cause or use your strengths to add to other people’s efforts. Because not all forms of activism require you to take to the street. The activism that is best for you, uses your strengths and adds them to a movement made up of a lot of people’s strengths, like this beautiful poster my friend Raj created.
But apart from feeling small and inconsequential in the face of all the challenges we face, the emotions that stop most people from doing anything are shame and fear. Shame that they are not doing enough. Fear that they don’t know enough, that they will get it wrong or use the wrong words. Both keep people locked in a small box of inaction, leaving the brunt of the work to those who cannot avoid it, usually because their own lives are directly or indirectly affected. I have learnt through reading “White Women” that shame and fear are tools used by white supremacy to make us hate ourselves and to keep us locked in perfectionism. Because if we are too afraid to speak out or at each other’s throats for not being perfect in our activism, nothing will change. How perfectly cunning, how perfectly evil.
Tasnim who writes as “reads.and.reveries” on Instagram and Substack recently wrote something I’ve been thinking a lot but have been unable to put into words, so I am simply going to quote her:
“I can (almost) see why avoidance seems easier, why it is tempting [to] carry on as usual but sooner or later there’ll come a time when we’ll all have to reckon with our actions (or inaction) and if you are truly as good as you hope you are, whatever excuses you’re currently using to justify your silence (and/or inaction) will not hold up against the clamouring of your own conscience.
[…] caring is not without its challenges- in so many ways we’re set up to neglect others for the sake of ourselves- but we have to refuse to give into any temptation to stop doing it. We have to refuse the unbearable life and reject the dead future, both for ourselves and for all others.
— Tasnim @reads.and.reveries
So if you feel like you want to do something but are afraid of doing it imperfectly, just start doing it. You will make mistakes, that is the nature of doing anything and especially of learning and doing something new. Few things have scared me more this year than writing and publishing these newsletters. I was afraid of not getting it right, of seeming self-righteous and of pushing people away but to quote Audre Lorde, when I "use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.” And if you’re sad, angry or overwhelmed by the violence streamed on to all of our phones then that is a human reaction to what we are witnessing. You should only be worried if you reacted any differently. Take time to rest and refuel, find something that gives you the strength to carry on and that reminds you of the good of humanity, but don’t stop engaging, our humanity depends on it.
„Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever.“
— Audre Lorde
Don’t ever doubt that your words are needed Ulrike! Your voice matters, and is being heard and inspires me every time i read your work. Thank you for sharing my poster 🙏🏾