Heartbroken in Community Together
I woke up this morning before my alarm went off and stared at the ceiling. I tried to put off checking my phone as long as I could. I spent last night with some of the people I care about. We were supposed to play Bump in the Dark but instead we mostly hung out and spent time in community with each other. I knew I couldn't let myself get pulled into the doom scrolling and rumination and obsessing that my mind was pulling me toward. I have no regrets about how I spent my time last night. When I finally looked at the news this morning I felt defeated. Heartbroken. I watched my daughter sleep and I felt so much grief. I cried. What is this world she is inheriting? I cried for her. I cried for my partner. My family. I cried for my queer and trans siblings, my Black and Brown siblings all over the world, and everyone who feels ground down by the world we are forced to exist in. I cried for myself.
I felt anger, as well. Not toward my fellow people, but toward the institutions that failed to stop this, toward the institutions that failed to protect us, that only ever had protected and only ever will protect us so long as it doesn't shake things up too much.
The cornerstone of my political belief is that people matter. That institutions and authority exist to crush people down and to amass power. That hierarchal power only exists to replicate itself, and is fundamentally incompatible with democracy. That the antidote to hierarchal power is people power. Social power. Community.
This belief permeates the work I do, both as a therapist and as an artist/writer. Bump in the Dark is a game, in part, about fighting the institutions that only have their own interests at heart. Who harness the darkness to meet their selfish goals. It's also a game about community, and the importance of community. It offers community as the only way we can fight back meaningfully against those dark forces. It is in community where we find strength. Where we find our power. And it's community that I find myself thinking about today. It is in community that we have hope.
I don't know the way forward. I wish I did. But I do know that we can only move forward together. Let's vow to take care of each other. And to fight. And to treat hope as an action that we can take, each and every day, in service of building a different kind of power, one grounded in love and community.
jex