Candle in the Darkness

His face is worn, the black skin crisscrossed with a thousand lighter, fine lines. He looks like he might have been a big guy at one time, tall and powerfully built.  But his body is shrunken now, the way people get when they are in a wheelchair for a long time. It’s a power chair; one of those motorized models that are expensive and usually signal a pretty severe level of disability.  He could be anywhere from 40 – 60, although he’s probably younger than I think. Life on the streets has a way of aging people.  I don’t get a vibe of mental illness, although you can’t really tell in a setting like this, passing by outside Safeway.  His clothes are old and dirty.  He wears a baseball cap with a US Marines patch on it.  I wonder fleetingly if that’s real, worn to increase my sympathy.  I am immediately ashamed.  Does it matter whether he’s a veteran or not?  What possible difference should that make?

I stop and pull some bills from my wallet, walk over, lean down and press them into his hand.  “I wish you well,” I say, looking into eyes that are impossibly tired.  What I want to say is Where is your mother? Where is your doctor? Where are the people in your life who should be nurturing you? Why do I have so many of those when you appear to have so few? 

“God bless you, ma’am,” he replies. I see that his eyes, while tired, seem kind. 

I tend to give money to people on the street—outside Safeway or CVS or Starbucks.  Other times, I don’t.  When someone approaches me in the dark, or in a remote corner of a parking lot, or by knocking on my car window before I can get out—I never give those people money.  They probably are not a real threat.  But they can feel like it. 

Sometimes I engage in conversation.  Other times, I simply wonder about the person and their life.  Sweetie, I think.  You seem so sick.  So sad.  Why are we both here at Safeway --- you seeking money you need and I spending money I have? What accident of birth or life or happenstance has given each of us our legacy?

I recently started writing a piece on compassion fatigue.  This is a term coined in 1992 by Carla Johnson, a nurse who noticed it among her emergency room colleagues. It refers to the burnout people in caring professions get—nurses, doctors, counselors, caregivers. Repeated exposure to the traumas of others can leave front-liners feeling not just bottomed out in their empathy, but exhausted, overwhelmed, discouraged; even resentful of the people they care for.  There can be physical symptoms—upset stomach, headaches, sleeplessness. Compassion fatigue strikes individuals and groups.  The collective version happens when whole swaths of society start to feel that problems are so big that the situation is hopeless.

 In my research, I have run across a compassion fatigue debunking camp—these are the people who say compassion fatigue is a made-up thing; that “the more you give the better you will feel.”  They tend to be overtly religious, and hew to the idea that with prayer and submission to the glory of God, our stores for human caring know no limits. As one such author preachily put it: “We know that if people would give just a little more—of their time, skills, knowledge, wisdom, compassion, wealth and love—the world would be a more peaceful and healthier place.”

My reaction to that? So true.  And such a nice idea.  And good for you that you are Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi all rolled into one.  The rest of us, I’m afraid, have to be a little more careful with our stores of emotional energy if we want to stay in the game for any length of time.

I see an analogue in our political system.  I don’t think the most dangerous thing in our democracy right now is self-dealing narcissism, power-hungry corruption, or even scorched earth demonizing of the other side. 

I think the most dangerous thing is despair.  The idea, held by so many, that the problems are so big and so unsolvable that doing nothing becomes a reasonable choice. 

In 2016, teetering on the edge of this kind of discouragement, I decided to get active politically and ultimately joined an organization called Focus for Democracy. F4D is a volunteer and fundraising organization that expands voter enfranchisement, educates voters on issues, and supports progressive candidates.  In presidential elections, we focus on delegate-rich swing states. In the mid-terms, we work down ticket—state house races, attorneys generals, secretaries of state—the people who will decide the presidential election if another one gets thrown into chaos.

Right now, mostly, I write for F4D: features and op-eds that run in “news deserts”—places across the country with lots of undecided, “low information” voters. We use the media they read (digital and social; not print) and focus on issues we know they care about. We collaborate with organizations on the ground.  We never demonize the other side.  In a story I recently published in Arizona, I wrote that opposing abortion rights did not make you a monster.  But it might cost you your doctor.  Medical residents in all specialties (not just reproductive medicine) are veering off states with abortion bans in record numbers because they can’t get the comprehensive medical training they need there. And because the majority of physicians in America today practice within 50 miles of where they completed their training, every man, woman and child can expect worsening health care if their state enacts an abortion ban. This is terrible for Arizona, which already suffers severe physician shortages.

F4D and its collaborators test everything they do and have impressive data demonstrating their effectiveness in persuasion, impact, and numbers of votes delivered. I worked in Pennsylvania in the run-up to 2022. We were told to be patient; that it would take at least a couple of election cycles to flip the state. What we achieved --- and by "we" I mean the coalition of F4D and its progressive collaborators --- was a Democratic governor, a Democratic US Senator and a Democratic majority in the State House of Representatives. (The State Senate is still majority Republican). To be clear, I am not a “never Republican” kind of operator.  But in these Pennsylvania races, the alternatives truly did seem dangerous.

These outcomes were not all F4D’s doing by any means.  But there are places, across the country, where votes flipped by the coalition—as measured by metrics and analytics --- were the margin of victory in tight races.  And there were so many tight races last time around.

I love this kind of impact. Is it everything? Of course not.  But like that proverb says, it is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.  This is my candle where democracy is concerned. 

On a Sunday not long ago, Reverend Brian, our minister at the Unitarian church I attend, handed out $5 to every person and gave us an assignment: give that $5 to someone or something of our choosing, notice how it felt, and report back.  

I thought about giving my $5 to someone on the street, like the kind-eyed man outside Safeway.  But that is something I already do.  And while it’s not exactly thoughtless on my part, it happens enough that it wouldn’t make me go deeper.  So I am mulling over something else; something along the lines of fighting the corrosive power of despair.

Right now, the $5 is sitting under the spirit jar in my shrine---the place in my house where I meditate and light candles each day, sending my care into the world.  Each morning, Abraham Lincoln’s sober face looks up at me and asks: what candle will you light today?  Each day, that bill is soaking up more of the power of one person’s intention; more desire to keep lighting candles and stop cursing darkness.  

When that bill is fully infused with all the love and sweetness it can hold, the recipient will reveal itself. I will let it loose—along with some of its brother-and-sister bills—and send it out into the world to change what is into what’s possible. 

And I know that the timing of when I do that—and the recipient --- will be exactly right.