When taking a risk is the only option, the only question is when (and how) to act

I am feeling very January-ish these days. Maybe not surprising, since we are just past the mid-point of this inevitable opening month to the new year... 

A lot has happened (and is happening) on the geopolitical stage and, try as I might to make it not so, what world leaders do filters down into my daily life. 

I refuse to look away. In fact, I am doubling down by embracing the new-to-me social media experience of THREADS (part of Meta’s online empire that includes Facebook and Instagram). 

I entered the Threads world cautiously, not really wanting to be there but, once there, became swept up in the remarkable real-time documentation of the day’s news by ordinary people (always check their profile, always verify their identity). 

Which is how I found myself, via my phone screen, on the streets of Minneapolis seeing up-to-the-minute recordings of ICE agents doing a horrifyingly realistic job of acting like thugs against ordinary Minnesotans doing such outrageous things as going to work, going to school, and driving down the street. By the by, ordinary Minnesotans were bearing witness to this thuggery, then sharing their footage on Threads. 

When, at the end of the day, I watch (via YouTube) both Canadian news (CBC) and American news (PBS), I am able to see how social media coverage by non-professionals can contribute to a fuller, often more immediate and granular, capture of the day’s news: While I wasn’t there on the street with the protesters, I do have a sense of what it was like because I have seen up-close real-time footage of the experience from the vantage point of the protesters. This often chaotic perspective makes me wonder how I would respond if thug-like agents were on the streets of my city. I like to think I would be out there, sign and whistle in hand, to bear witness and to make Good Trouble. 

For those already doing that, in Minneapolis and elsewhere, it is risky to do so, but troubling times call for each of us to understand the risks we are facing collectively, to calculate as an individual what it means to act or to look away, and then to plan accordingly. 

To be clear, action comes in many multilayered multicoloured multifaceted options, some explicitly public, others quieter and more private. My way would not be yours, necessarily. But looking, seeing, understanding that there are risks being faced from a world leader by ordinary people in daily life and on the streets, that is nonnegotiable in my view.

NOTE 1: Heather Cox Richardson (HCR) is a daily no-veneer no-special-effects commentator, grounded in history and credentials; she explained recently why it is so important that Minnesotans are standing up to ICE.

NOTE 2: In amongst the hard work of keeping up with the hard news is the equally important need to laugh out loud; Danish comedian Huxi Bach offers a witty and clever take on the US president's desire to purchase Greenland. 

NOTE 3: I surprise myself sometimes when I realize that I have expressed a core belief of mine in a fictional story, so I offer the short story below to illustrate the connection that exists for me between core values and action. 

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MAISIE MAKES A MOVE

Maisie had been raised an only child, a daughter rather than the longed for son — a fact she found significantly less troubling than her father did.

Since the age of 13, Maisie had been plotting to live her own life rather than the one her father wanted for her. He wanted security and routine for her; she wanted more, bigger, different. And she knew she had an ally in her mother, because they shared a look between them every time her father intoned the suffering he must endure for being father to a mere daughter. His quiet but definite ranting fuelled her desire to leave and the message held in her mother’s eyes stoked her determination. There was a whole world out there. It was too late for her mother, but for Maisie, that world was waiting for her.

The day she packed her suitcase, tucked her paltry savings from odd sewing jobs into the zippered compartment of her tapestry handbag, and slipped the spam-on-white-bread sandwich her mother handed her into the outer pocket — that day was a good day indeed.

She had never hidden her intent to leave from either parent. So they weren’t surprised when she announced that she had bought a bus ticket for herself as her 17th birthday present. She received a hug from her mother, a stern “Be careful” from her father, and she walked down the road to the bus station.

With each step, she felt closer to her new life, to her real life. The one in which she was in charge of the direction in which she headed. For the moment, that was the big city. Get to the bus station, get on the bus, get off at her longed-for destination, and get herself to the boarding house she had read about in the newspaper at her local library.

Funny.

Thinking about doing this, daydreaming about it, longing for it, had been quite different. Surely, it would be exciting, thrilling, adventurous.

But doing it, being in her own shoes and getting herself to the station, on the bus, to the boarding house — all that felt less exciting, a bit more onerous, quite a lot more daunting. She had never done this before. And it all felt strange and demanding of her in a way she had not expected. She had expected fireworks and jubilation.

She had thought that taking the risk of leaving home and starting her own life would feel wondrous and enlivening. But this start felt hard, felt challenging. Much more so than she had realized it would.

Not so much fun as simply necessary. The right thing to do, even despite the fluttering feeling of trepidation lodged beneath her heart.

But she kept going.

Once she had navigated her way to the boarding house and then to her tiny room with just a bed, a chair and a dresser with a mirror, she felt better. The key was solid proof in her hand of the move she had made. And she could see herself in the mirror — a young woman, an untested woman, but a woman in the big city, ready for tomorrow.

She had thought that taking a risk was about doing daring things, putting herself ‘out there’, being brave about physical things and maybe hurting herself in the process.

But sitting on her bed in that tiny boarding house room, Maisie realized in a flash that risk is not about doing what others are not expecting of you, not about breaking other people’s rules but, rather, in knowing what you must do to be your truest self — and doing exactly that. For not doing that — that is the biggest risk of all.

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.

Photo by Luke Helgeson on Unsplash