Evening the Keel

On the Autumn Equinox, Can We Live Into Equity and Balance?

The autumn equinox, which takes place today, is supposed to be a moment where we reach a natural balance. The sun crosses the Equator, and at that moment, for a day, all is supposed to be even.

Light and darkness, day and night, are even for a day, and we sit in a pause in time, a moment of consideration where everything is supposed to be in its place. 

Every year, Spring and Fall, I try to find an equity on this day. I search for something that feels even, or at least even-ing.

But we are crossing into a season of foreboding now. Covid death numbers are rising again, just as we’re being told “the pandemic is over.” We have an election on the horizon, and while there are some positive signs of its potential outcome, nothing is guaranteed, and even the prospect of a more representative outcome brings with it the threat of white supremacist violence everywhere, in unpredictable bursts. 

November and December present to me right now as a looming void, where the future we might be living through is largely unknown.

It’s disconcerting, this wobbling of direction toward an uncertain future, this propelling forward with clear signs of declination toward fascism while trying to cultivate equally important opportunities of hope and change.

Evening the keel requires us to cultivate a capacity to hold steady through swells and storms. I’m trying, as we all are, to maintain stability through crisis and fear, even as crisis and fear are consciously cultivated by others for the express purpose of allowing fascism to rise.

It’s far from easy. It takes and it takes and sometimes, it feels like there is nothing in return.

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I wrote last week about the unexpected death of a family member, and about how events like this cause us to reflect on who we are, on the complexity of a life, and on how we value our connections, or don’t.

This week has put me deeper into this reflection. Life is short. The relative I lost was only ten years older than I am now, and while I am convinced in my bones that I have decades left to go, the question of what to do with the remaining time has demanded my clarity and focus.

I spend an inordinate amount of my attention on trying to rectify inequity, and on control, and on attempting to anticipate the next worst thing that’s coming so that I can be prepared to combat, fight, survive. In between, I cultivate fantasies of escape that will never come to pass, that do little but permit the occasional daydream in the midst of a day of fighting back in every other respect.

I spend almost no time, I realized this week, cultivating the relationships that matter to me the most, beyond those with my children and those that might arguably propel the vote.

My keel is not even.

And this is not the way to be, nor the way to build a future that might be better for all of us. One of the things we have to consider about the culture we live in is how little we value connection and relationships. How little we prioritize mutual care and mutual aid. How little we season our connection to those we love.

Life is short.

And we all deserve better than lives spent trading labor to survive, fighting tooth and nail for incremental change, attempting to convince those who think we’re worthless that we’re worthy of not just crumbs, but real respect and real support and real democracy.

We deserve to see the value in every human being, in every nation and in our own, and cultivate our relationship to that.

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So what does that mean in practice? It means we start to care about, and for, one another, in real, material ways.

Consider, for instance, some questions: How can we redistribute wealth in real time? How can we provide medical care to those who are uninsured without charging a penny? How can we feed our neighbors who are food insecure and house those who are houseless, and do it outside or alongside efforts to sway institutions that are built to harm instead of help?

What I’m talking about here is something called Dual Power, long recognized in Black power movements as a strategy to build alternative systems of survival as the old ones crumble or ignore or neglect us.

Dual Power is about building systems that function parallel to those that society thinks are functioning to protect us, new systems that create real economies of safety and humanity and care, alongside the others that are failing.

Dual Power is about not waiting for others to save us, but working to save ourselves and all those we care about, in real time.

Equinoxes are about duality.

Light and dark. Day and night. Hope and despair.

Where is your focus? Beyond your vote, how will you actively work to even the keel for everyone? 

How will you live into Dual Power, today?

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In my quiet, private moments, I think a lot these days about sacrifice and worth. About what we demand from marginalized people to just survive, about the small numbers of us who give our whole lives in the hope of creating incremental and, maybe if we’re lucky, exponential change.

We deserve to be safe and happy, no matter what. So does everyone else.

That is not today’s reality.

We are all in the same boat, guided by the universal navigation system of this planet, whether we choose to see it consciously or not, but some of us are being actively harmed, thrown overboard, neglected while we drown.

Will we balance this country, and for once keep all of us in its promise together? Will we evenly distribute the weight of our survival, so all of us make it, and not just a few?

We will choose to sit in the promise of equity, of real balance, and choose to grow it?

I hope so, but truthfully, it’s anybody’s guess.

All I can do is all any of us can do. 

Aim for dual power. 

Put our backs into righting the ship.

Try, as hard as we can, to even the keel.