To Keep Going Anyway

On Resilience, Reinvention and Waiting for the Plot Twist

Last week, I had the good fortune to interview bestselling author Wajahat Ali on the Living Through It podcast. What was supposed to be a discussion about storytelling and writing and social media turned into a much broader discussion about life and struggle.

Wajahat has been through it in his life, as anyone who has read his memoir, Go Back to Where You Came From, knows. From having a child with Stage 4 cancer to seeing his own parents go to jail, his struggles have been serious and painful.

And yet, at one point in our discussion, Wajahat began to talk about the importance of joy and hope.

He pointed out that once we cave to a nihilistic worldview that it’s all over, we are making an assumption that we know the ending to our story.

In essence, by choosing despair, he said, we’re removing ourselves from the possibility of plot twists and change, when if we decide to keep going for just one more day instead, all of life as we know it can shift.

This interview could not have come at a better time for me, and perhaps for you as well.

Why? Well, in recent weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of democracy amid ongoing threats, and also about my own life through the lens of how we keep going though we don’t know the outcome and we can’t predict the future.

It’s led me to a deep dive on concepts of reinvention and resilience— even when we’re afraid of failure, even when we know the deck is stacked, and even when hope sometimes seems lost.

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Single parenting is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. For years now, I’ve been the sole provider and sole caretaker of my two young kids. Every day as they get older, there are new challenges and new concerns, and also plenty of new celebrations and joys. The financial and emotional pressures of single motherhood are extreme, even as I feel like the luckiest mom in the world to be raising these two amazing children.

In recent years, I’ve begun to see how so much of our struggle as individuals is systemic, however. Pay inequity piles on to a lack of paid family leave piles on to the cost of childcare piles on to no free school lunch piles on to privatized medicine to the tune of $1000 a month.

Patriarchy enforces harm against women who choose or are forced to parent alone.

Add to that the lack of support for the mental and physical health of mothers generally, and the challenges to all of us through a multiyear pandemic, and it’s a true clusterf*ck.

Some nights, I don’t sleep for the worry.

Some days, I sit at my desk and cry. (Like maybe this morning, for instance.)

And yet, for the sake of these two glorious beings I birthed, I have no choice but to keep going, for they are worth it.

And yet, for the sake of these two glorious beings and myself, I must commit to my own consistent resilience and reinvention, for we are worth it.

And if there is not hope, there is nothing.

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The last few weeks have brought us a near fist-fight on the floor of the House of Representatives, and the election of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker following fifteen tries and a mountain of concessions to the far right white nationalist wing of the GOP. The next two years promise more chaos and deflection.

So what does resilience and reinvention mean in the face of that? How do we carry on and continue to fight for a better future from a place of hope?

For one, we must continue to make our voices heard. While I know so many of us are tired after so many years of fighting, just as I must continue on for the sake of my children, we must collectively continue to fight for a better future for all of us.

We must continue to make calls and protest and advocate for policies that create real change. We must continue to fund organizations and efforts to protect and secure our rights. We must continue to get out the vote where we live and push for elected officials who fight for and represent our values.

We must do this because we do not yet know the end of the story. 

We must do this because we can’t concede the plot.

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I wonder often these days in moments where I am questioning everything how the story will end– whether that’s the story of America or the story of this chapter of struggle in my own life. Who will emerge victorious? Will I?

The good news about these questions is that within them lies possibility, and the outcome is anything but guaranteed.

So the choice we have left is whether to commit to our own reinvention, or to throw in the towel.

Do we reinvent democracy that provides for all of us, for once and always, as it never has?

Do we fight for that even when we might fail, or experience setbacks, or when the other side is counting on our exhaustion and hope that we’ll quit?

Do we fight for ourselves and all those we love anyway?

Do we aim for the highest vision of what is possible, come what may?

Yes. Yes. Yes we do.

Because we do not know the future.

Because we must refuse to concede the plot.

Because fate just might have plans for us about which we know nothing yet.

My commitment, to myself and to all those I love, is to keep going anyway.

Because all of us, every one of us together everywhere, are worth that effort and that choice.

Happy New Year. Let’s get to it.

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