Thread by @nejsnave

ask yourself: if life got harder, what could you handle?

if bombs were going off in your neighborhood, what would you do?

if the supply chain was interrupted and much of our food supply stopped for months could you cope?

if we were under attack would you stay and resist?

if life gets more chaotic not less over the next few years, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it, what would you change? how would you adjust? because it feels like life might get a lot more chaotic and maybe we need to mentally prepare ourselves.

historically times post pandemics are full of social upheaval. as arundhati roy says, the pandemic is a portal. it separates past and future. we are not going back. we can only move forward into a different reality.

watching the ukrainians, i cannot get over their strength and resolve. the anti tank equipment that obviously came out of a museum. the elderly couple chasing armed soldiers, men pointing shotguns at them, off their property. the casual courage is ... mind boggling.

do you think we would respond like that? we are not tough. we are fighting a battles every day (whether our premier acknowledges it or not): against this disease. it is still attacking us. and our resolve has not been strong. tiny inconveniences have felled us in many ways.

It's almost like we are stuck in this netherworld right now. many of us are longing for the past to return, unable to break with it and acknowledge life will not the the same, ever, and things are still going to be hard in these new realities we need to forge. maybe harder.

what are the things that matter now? they are different from what they were in the before times. they are different than they were a week ago, a month ago, and that is in part our new reality. constantly adjusting. wartime. uncertainty, change, much we can't control, danger:

the future no longer resembles the past. i don't know what it looks like but this repressive authoritarian trend from ukraine to book banning and don't say gay and the Texas trans laws - that is looming + not the future we want. we're going to have to fight for the one we want.

i have absolutely no idea what that looks like or any if it looks like or where to even start, but we need to start. maybe by figuring out what matters right now and how to go after it because ... the planet is rearming. european military budgets are going up. the swiss took

a position! inflation. gas prices. small things can catch fire quickly under complicated polarized conditions. we need wartime thinking. societally. about how we are going to get ppl through the next few years. and ourselves. how we turn the page on the past for good + move on.

there are communities within our society who are accustomed to dealing with hardship. the poor. the marginalized. refugees. the struggle will not get easier for anyone, but some communities are structured to survive hardship + tough times. that leadership will be needed.

i know it can feel like everything is getting unbearably hard but that is how we lived for generations and how many of us live today. no certainty. constant struggle. do not ask for an easier path, ask for a stronger back, goes and old proverb. words to live by today.

the way to survive hard times is to turn outward, not inward. community, not isolation. we are going to have to get better at true community if the society we want is going to survive these battles.