Unprecedented Grief and Collective Powerlessness
What to Do About Our Feelings of Helplessness and Despair
The last six weeks of intense destruction in the Gaza Strip have felt, in some ways, like the final straw in a series of weird and violent events that have been escalating since 2015.
From the November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris, to the election of Donald Trump, the Women’s March, the Black Lives Matter movements, the Covid-19 pandemic, the wildfires and flooding across the world, the return of the Taliban, Iran’s suppression of women, the invasion of Ukraine, all the way to the global protests against Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza, the silent genocide in Congo, the war in Sudan, has brought to light the hypocrisies of our leaders, our governmental structures, and even our own lives.
As the year draws to a close, there is a sense of an unprecedented grief and an intense, collective feeling of powerlessness that can make us questions whether the very ground beneath our feet is still, in fact, there.
This is important, because these two things — grief and powerlessness — are very related.
