I never quite know how to navigate the world right now. The bombardment of news, and the intake of realizing the news shows a sorrowful, often hateful, world.

While I know that the entire world isn’t one way, the world through my screen tells me it’s full of atrocious acts. Yes, they are there and real. But are they a true depiction of life? If so, how do we navigate this life while sad, burnt out, and in fear of what’s next?

As the new year rolled around, I was fully embracing it’s symbolism. I take the opportunity of a fresh start just about as much as it’s given. The past few months have been a challenge for way too personal reasons. Let’s just say, survival mode had been activated lately.

On the morning of January 1st, I woke and drove to the beach. I watched the sunrise over the eastern facing ocean. It was as transformative of a moment as many others in my life.

The universal awe and mystery of this moment truly felt like a cape of comfort during this time of my life.

As the days progressed into this new year, of course got a bunch of books out of my local public library. One was Alice Walker’s We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For, inner light in a time of darkness; published in 2006. I read this book first in 2020, as I felt the world as I knew it was collapsing (it was) during Covid lock down.

Alice Walker writes and recalls her previous lectures on the subject of not sitting back anymore, waiting for someone to change this which needs to be changed. She writes about what it means to have agency when what we thought was whole begins to unravel.

Of course, like any true philosopher on life, there is no answer to these questions of living in a place, geographically or internally, that seems to be spiraling downward, The hope, as Walker points out, is within ourselves. It’s up to us individually to take actions that are a walk of hope, which in turn is a act of activism.

As my title asks, are we the ones we’ve been waiting for? Since Walker wrote this book, we culturally have become addicted to our phones and social media. We scramble to connect to one another, but what happens is we feel more divided than ever. Honestly, we’re divided within ourselves on what next step to take to make change.

Yet, we truly are the only ones to change anything within ourselves.

Alice Walker quotes this poem by the deceased Thich Nhat Hahn, a Vietnamese Thiền Buddhist monk. Take this in as I sign off here, as a plea to remember to keep our heads high. Hahn wrote this poem in 1965, to his community facing war and death daily.

Recommendation, by Thich Nhat Hahn:

Promise me,
promise me this day,
promise me now,
while the sun is overhead
exactly at the zenith,

promise me:
Even as they
strike you down
with a mountain of hatred and violence;
even as they step on you and crush you
like a worm,
even as they dismember and disembowel you,
remember brother, remember:
man is not our enemy.

The only thing worthy of you is compassion –
invincible, limitless, unconditional.
Hatred will never let you face
the beast in man.

One day, when you face this beast alone
with your courage intact, your eyes kind,
untroubled
(even as no one sees them),
out of your smile
will bloom a flower.

And those who love you
will behold you
across ten thousand worlds of birth and dying.

Alone again,
I will go on with bent head,
knowing that love has become eternal.
On the long, rough road
the sun and moon will continue to shine.

poem by Thich Nhat Hahn.