Survivor's guilt

The ones left behind

I feel sick to my stomach. It’s hard to concentrate, to sleep, to sit still, to move, to do anything but vibrate with anxiety, bouncing from this to that, wondering what to do next, rejecting every option as useless, foolish, dumb.

I have a recurring dream in which I go back to the Agency. But I don’t have a badge, and I’m not supposed to be there. My friends welcome me, but we are all nervous and uncertain about my presence. I eventually leave, and they wave good-bye. They stay behind, and I wake up with an unsettled, wistful feeling.

Real life is far worse than the dream. My friends, there and in other agencies, are thrown into chaos and fear. Their work is literally being trashed in some cases. They are viewed with suspicion for being disloyal or at best redundant. Their very purpose is mocked and questioned by those supposed to lead them.

They are under deliberate, premeditated, psychological assault.

The friends at USAID fear for the lives of people around the world whom they serve. Not metaphorically or in the abstract. People will die. And these dedicated civil servants—the best of us, the most earnest and idealistic—have the immense burden of feeling responsible.

One friend, after I texted to check on her, sent this back: “They can take away our building, our signage, our computer access…but they can’t kill our spirit and our desire to save lives.”

That’s the kind of people that this sociopathic, unelected billionaire and his felonious, treacherous patron are targeting. The injustice of evil on the march is like a vice on the heart and a torment to the mind. The evil itself is one thing, its very existence is tragic. But its brazen, unbridled success, that will make you go insane.

They keep rebuilding the damn Death Star.

And I am sitting here, still in my pajamas, writing mere words.

I left. I got out of dodge.

My rational brain comforts me with the facts: I announced my departure well before the election, my continued presence there would make little difference for what is going on, I can take action on the outside that I could not while there, I can still offer friendship and support. Had I stayed, I would probably be just another casualty.

But I didn’t stay.

I am relieved and grateful and guilty and compelled and paralyzed. I feel obligated to do something to make up for it.

What do I do. What can I do. What should I do. It swirls like a cyclone in my skull.

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We have also received word that the program through which we sponsored our Ukrainian friends, Tetiana and Sergei, is on the verge of ending. The Trump administration has already ended similar programs for Cuba, Haiti, and Venezuela. We had hoped they would at least let the white people stay (I’m not really joking). But we are told it’s only a matter of time.

Overnight, their town was bombed again. Their adult daughter and parents are there, thankfully safe. Tetiana and Sergei have watched the war and tried to help from afar. Meanwhile, they have also built a life here. A life of hard work, progress, and joy. They have walked peacefully along the Potomac with their little dog, Uma, and been enlivened by the lights of New York. They’ve planted sunflowers with other Ukrainians across from the Russian Embassy in protest. They’ve seen their first 4th of July fireworks display and eaten their first Thanksgiving meal.

They’ve given back to us, their group of sponsors. Their friends. Sergei has done repairs and renovations in our homes. Tetiana has done our nails and cooked us delicious Ukrainian food. They have helped us see things with new eyes and full hearts. They have shown us our own country anew.

We don’t say Slava Ukraini! in the abstract anymore. We say it with conviction and hope and enormous pride in our friends and what they have been able to survive.

They have opened up our lives. Not just to them, but to each other. I was friends with the other sponsors before, but we are drawn closer together through Sergei and Tetiana. I myself feel more bolstered by their community.

I won’t speak for Tetiana and Sergei as to the emotions of leaving one’s family in a war and making a new home elsewhere. What I can say is how I will feel if they have to leave.

Horrified. Embarrassed for my country. Angry, again, at the people who chose this for us all. Worried. Anxious. Guilty.

What do I do, what can I do, what should I do.

We have consulted with attorneys and are exploring their options. If you would like to contribute to their legal fund, we would appreciate it.¹

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Love is a tremendous complication. When you involve yourself with others, you don’t know where it will end or what it will require of you. You also obligate yourself to others in a conscious way. I specify conscious, because in truth, we are all involved and we are all obligated and our lives are all tremendously complicated. We are all tangled up together in chaos and pain and beauty.

From the MLK Memorial.

Here in America, we have the illusion of containment. Our society is carefully arranged to keep everything manageable. We control our time, money, households, children, futures. We put fences up around our yards and our schedules and our belongings. In America, we can be anything we want to be! Because we only have to accommodate ourselves and our small immediate circles.

There are positive things about that. It makes for a more efficient and orderly society. More “successful.” It’s lonelier, sure, but that can be remedied, just like everything else here. You just go out and acquire what you need.

And it might work quite well. You can walk briskly by a homeless man sleeping on a park bench without becoming overly bothered. You don’t have to lie awake at night trying to figure out remedies for the cousin who is a drug addict or the neighbor with cancer. Don’t get me wrong, you’re saddened by those misfortunes, and you want to help. You do help, with a donation here or a casserole there. It helps.

And rationally, there is only so much you can do. You can’t erase social problems or rearrange systems or cure mental illness or addiction or cancer. You can’t empty out your bank account every time you see a need. You have children with needs. You have needs. And so you go on.

In many other cultures, it’s different. There is individuality, but there is also intense social obligation. Sometimes it’s oppressive, and it robs dreams and steals personal happiness. But it’s probably a more honest existence. Because we are obligated, whether we know it or not. We sense it.

I’ve spoken many times about how, as a child in Kenya, I hated the massive inequalities and the overwhelming privilege with which I was endowed. I bristled at feeling set apart and not part of a whole. I also loved my house and my things. But I couldn’t fully enjoy them.

I still hate inequality. I still despise the absence of mutuality. I still have this innate sense that I am connected, I am responsible, I am obligated.

What do I do, what can I do, what should I do, what must I do.

The truth is, I don’t know. I could give all I have away, and it wouldn’t solve homelessness. I could rejoin the Agency, and it wouldn’t stop Donald Trump. I could go fight in Ukraine, and it wouldn’t help Tetiana and Sergei. In a way, it’s arrogant to think my efforts matter at all. That’s the other piece of things—we like to feel heroic. Indispensable. The man of the hour. The leader for our time.

But that impulse is an individualized, ego-driven manifestation of something much deeper in each of us, the invisible, quantum-physical, evolutionary, spiritual ties that bind us all into one. We can’t escape them, not if we want to remain human.

A lot of people opt out of their humanity. I think we are seeing that pretty clearly right now.

So I will keep tossing and turning, as futile as it is. I will keep riding a stationary bicycle of concern. I will keep crying wasteful, extravagant tears. And yes, I will try to care for myself as well, lest I immolate in an altruistically narcissistic quest to be more than I am.

But I’m not going to ignore the excruciating call of my own humanity. The guilt is the obligation, and the obligation is the reality of oneness. And the acknowledgment of oneness is love.

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I am a huge U2 fan and have always loved the song One, which is usually interpreted in the context of a romantic or other intimate relationship. But like all U2 songs—why they are great—it has prismatic turns of meaning.

Since the election, I’ve been hearing it in a whole new light, as a statement about living in a pluralistic democracy, with people—especially Christians—who are too afraid for the amount of trust it requires. Who, honestly, seem afraid of their own God. Too afraid to move forward, so we’ve left them behind.

Have you come here for forgiveness? Have you come to raise the dead? Have you come here to play Jesus to the lepers in your head?

I’ll leave you today with the full lyrics, which are challenging and painful at this moment, when the call to love has rarely seemed harder or more essential.

We get to carry each other.

Is it getting better

Or do you feel the same?

Will it make it easier on you, now

You got someone to blame?

You say one love, one life

When it's one need in the night

One love, we get to share it

Leaves you, baby, if you don't care for it

Did I disappoint you

Or leave a bad taste in your mouth?

You act like you never had love

And you want me to go without

Well, it's too late tonight

To drag the past out into the light

We're one, but we're not the same

We get to carry each other, carry each other

One

Have you come here for forgiveness?

Have you come to raise the dead?

Have you come here to play Jesus

To the lepers in your head?

Did I ask too much? More than a lot

You gave me nothing, now it's all I got

We're one, but we're not the same

Well, we hurt each other, then we do it again

You say love is a temple, love a higher law

Love is a temple, love the higher law

You ask me to enter, but then you make me crawl

And I can't be holding on to what you got

When all you got is hurt

One love, one blood

One life, you got to do what you should

One life with each other

Sisters, brothers

One life, but we're not the same

We get to carry each other, carry each other

One

1. Please note, we are using the same platform we used to raise money for their initial settlement, so it looks like we are well past our goal but that money has been used already.