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Patience
Oren Jay Sofer's newsletter this morning has a bit about patience. It's not on his web site, but he opens with this question:
And then proceeds to talk about how to have patience with overwhelming things without becoming either passive or overwhelmed.
That's great and all, but he never really answers his question. I think that's because he's asking very slightly the wrong question. (And not just because of which things he chooses to lump in with "the rest of the chaos in the world".) Better, I think is:
Let me give an example.
Arisia recently opened new bank accounts at a Black-owned bank here in Boston. Yesterday it was time to update the signature cards for these. My previous experience with this is that it is always a hassle, that the rules for how to make it happen are never presented the same way twice, and in general there's way more runaround than there has to be. But at our old bank, it has also been that walking in to a branch as an older white man, with a lot of class markers, cut the hassle down significantly. (Including that the locations and hours of the branches were arranged to make even walking in less of a hassle for people like me.)
This was not our experience yesterday. It took nearly four hours to get the signature cards changed, including a lot of driving back and forth across Boston for different pieces of paper.
And that is the point: we opened these bank accounts as a way of giving up our privilege. It takes patience not to be the one who gets to take shortcuts with red tape. But it's also useful in a way that Oren misses.
Dealing with big problems is going to take a long time. It may be a while before we have anything visible to show for it. We are going to need a lot of patience, both in the moment and in the long term, in order to keep up the effort we need.
How can having patience with climate emergency, war, and the rest of the chaos in the world be useful?
And then proceeds to talk about how to have patience with overwhelming things without becoming either passive or overwhelmed.
That's great and all, but he never really answers his question. I think that's because he's asking very slightly the wrong question. (And not just because of which things he chooses to lump in with "the rest of the chaos in the world".) Better, I think is:
How can having patience for climate emergency, war, and the rest of the chaos in the world be useful?
Let me give an example.
Arisia recently opened new bank accounts at a Black-owned bank here in Boston. Yesterday it was time to update the signature cards for these. My previous experience with this is that it is always a hassle, that the rules for how to make it happen are never presented the same way twice, and in general there's way more runaround than there has to be. But at our old bank, it has also been that walking in to a branch as an older white man, with a lot of class markers, cut the hassle down significantly. (Including that the locations and hours of the branches were arranged to make even walking in less of a hassle for people like me.)
This was not our experience yesterday. It took nearly four hours to get the signature cards changed, including a lot of driving back and forth across Boston for different pieces of paper.
And that is the point: we opened these bank accounts as a way of giving up our privilege. It takes patience not to be the one who gets to take shortcuts with red tape. But it's also useful in a way that Oren misses.
Dealing with big problems is going to take a long time. It may be a while before we have anything visible to show for it. We are going to need a lot of patience, both in the moment and in the long term, in order to keep up the effort we need.