Building Political Resilience {part 1}
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Not Left, Not Right, but Deep - The Fetzer Institute.
With the midterm elections surrounding us, I’ve been reflecting on the challenges I feel when it comes to engaging with democracy in this country right now. Sometimes I am all moral outrage and calling my representatives and going to rallys. Sometimes, I am overwhelmed, exhausted and scared so I shut down completely. I ignore it all.
In that extreme vasciliation, I find myself often thinking, “am I crazy???” And that, my friends, is the number one sign that you are being gaslit.
The term originated from the 1938 play and subsequent film Gaslight, where the protagonist’s husband slowly manipulated her into believing she’s going mad. Throughout the film, the main character sees the gaslights dimming and brightening for no apparent reason. Her husband convinces her that it's all in her head, but in reality, he was switching the attic lights on and off to create the gaslight flickers.
The turning point in the movie is when someone else says “hey, did you notice the gaslights are flickering?”
Naming things has power. And naming a faulty, fractured, messy situation might not make it neater, easy or better, but it does allow us to reclaim a sense of sanity when we can, in community, acknowledge that indeed the gaslights are flickering.
You aren’t crazy.
Democracy is hard. Really hard.
And, it is vital that we both pay attention and engage.
In the book Burn Out, the authors write, “wellness is a state of action, not a state of being”.
Similarly, Congressman John Lewis once stated, “Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself.”
This correlation in states of action led me to reflect on the overlap in democratic engagement and in our self-care. Join me for this 3-part meditation series as we explore what’s needed to build Political Resilience.
Learn more about my Awakened Heart Meditation Community: https://www.merylarnett.com/awakened-heart-meditation-community
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