And What Can One Do?
Reflections on the world falling apart, hope, and the courage to create a world of your own.
Even in chaos, a world of your own can exist.
In June of 1941, Anaïs Nin wrote in her diary:
“Had I not created my whole world, I would certainly have died in other people’s.”
Amid the horrors of World War II, Nin described the news as
“one long endless horror story, filled with brutality, sadism, carnage, madness, and treachery.”
The world outside, she said, was too savage to bear:
“Every bomb falls on a house we lived in, on a human being we love. And what can one do?”
And what can one do?
That question haunts me, as I find myself having similar observations of the world outside my walls.
It echoes incessantly in my ear as I tend the broken pieces of shattered progress.
What can we do as we watch our fellow humans celebrate the ruins,
justifying what the soul condemns?
It feels reckless, even irresponsible,
like breaking some unspoken civic law if I step away from the daily rolling in mud with pigs.
Because nothing changes.
Except now I’m dirty too.
Is it worth it, bearing witness to filth that blinds me to what is beautiful?
At what point do we surrender to the inevitable crash,
holding fast, stubbornly,
to the belief that love will rise from the wreckage,
that hope dares to exist here at all?
I still believe it.
I still believe this chaos is a crucible,
a necessary, tragic time of awakening,
a storm that strips us bare,
so we can rebuild from the bones of what was.
The world may crumble around us,
perhaps for decades,
perhaps beyond my lifetime,
beyond the lifetime of my children.
But here’s the truth:
We don’t have to live in their collapse.
We don’t have to die in their drama.
We don’t have to bow to their ruins
or kneel to their false gods.
We can create our own world.
A world that glistens.
A world that dances.
A world that sings.
We can stitch it together from courage, imagination, and hope against all reason.
In the end, we are doing exactly what Anaïs Nin knew we must:
we are creating our own world.