Everything Everywhere All at Once

Spring has quickly turned to summer here in Texas, and I’ve been enjoying getting back to ALL the work in person. It’s been a welcome season of celebrations — for the foundation, I’ve attended building dedications, visited partners on food rescues and checked in on chickens we funded at a farm. For my side gig at ConnectHER, I finally got to meet a grantee partner (Sharifah, above) whom I had only met online. It’s so incredibly gratifying to meet with the beneficiaries of programs you’ve seen in a presentation or walk into a building you have only seen in renderings. To me, giving is hard in the abstract. I’m always humbled by the generosity of those who may never see or interact with the people and organizations they invest in. That takes a lot of trust and a lot of hope that things can and will be better. Being able to take time to meet partners and celebrate impact is a real gift.

Besides just in work, I’ve been saying yes to all the other things — saw Dolly AND Willie at SXSW, went to my 20th (!) high school reunion, started tennis, celebrated my last birthday in my 30s. I was also lucky enough to hear Gloria Steinem and Margaret Atwood in conversation at an event in April. Gloria, as most know, has been promoting women’s rights for the last six decades. One of the questions posed to her was, in effect, what kept her going all these years. She replied:

I’m a hope-aholic… Hope is a form of planning. Unless you have some degree of hope you’ve defeated yourself.

As someone who values (at least the illusion of) control, I definitely use hope as a coping mechanism and as a way to manifest the future as I see it. In instances when I have lost hope, it has certainly defeated me and the work I was trying to do. I’ve found it’s especially important to have hope, even magical, delusional levels of hope, when working with marginalized communities where colonialism, war, institutional racism and lived realities point to a future of almost certain suffering. Giving, of course, is an extension of hope, its own form of planning and a coping strategy for uncertainty. We give to make an impact, to leave behind footprints of our values and cast our vote for how we want the world to be (ie: just, safe, not on fire). When you donate to cancer research, tutor a student or show up to serve a meal, you are making your version of the world possible, creating the future you want to see. Which brings me to the possibility of other futures…

Have you seen Everything Everywhere All at Once? I loved loved loved it — a kungfu and scifi movie taking place in a multiverse that’s centered on female relationships, kindness and… everything else. Without any spoilers, I wanted to talk about just one takeaway from the film. Vox talked to physicist Spiros Michalakis about the movie, and he explained the power of the multiverse this way:

There is something very powerful about just knowing, even though you may not know how, but just knowing that something is possible. Often it’s heroes that are the ones that first believed something was possible, and that fate was not set. Just knowing, or at least believing so strongly that something is possible, then allows you to mess around and experiment and figure out how to actually make it possible.

There could be a universe moving forward in which climate change destroys us all. It is distinctly possible, even likely, that refugees will continue not to matter and languish without rights. You can game out pretty much any injustice or inequity you care about and come to a bitter conclusion. But there are so many other possible futures as well. One lesson from the film, without giving too much away, is that the world I live in now, this present moment, is where my potential is and where I’m needed. I actually have a lot of power with the choices available to me — to be present and kind to myself and others and have hope to shape this universe (by that, I mean my little universe not like THE universe, but also, yes, THE universe. There, I said it). The power in multiple realities happening simultaneously is that, yes, there is randomness and chaos, but also the power to see other possibilities in ourselves and have hope that we can change. That we can be changed. I’ve never seen a sci-fi movie in my life and here I am talking about the multiverse, lol. Trust me. See it. So good.

Another thing I find myself fighting with the return to IRL gatherings and long delayed plans, is the desire to split my time and attention and to lean into allthefunwehaventbeenhaving. The celebrations and events have been so refreshing and joyful, but at the end of the day, I find myself tuning out, not wanting to return to the news of war in Ukraine or Covid data or even real life unhoused people standing outside my car window. Can’t the ribbon cutting I just went to fix ALL homelessness, please?! (Multiverse camera pan — There is definitely another universe version of me that is a DJ on a Thai beach who helps no one ever, drinks banana coladas all day out of (gasp!) plastic straws and DOESN’T CARE. Next newsletter- shadow sides!). I am grateful for the release of the last few months, but I’m also begrudgingly aware of how, when the dopamine hits my brain, I want it and nothing else and resent that things are still hard. I had a heck of a time just returning to this newsletter, to my own thoughts, and facing the fact that my job isn’t a series of wins. Not surprisingly, ignoring, numbing, or becoming a littering beach DJ won’t help. All of those are versions of giving up, losing hope. Being truly present means being able to deal with what is, not just what we want to focus on. It’s a part of the whole be-the-best-me-in-the-multiverse bargain to not just give in to hedonism or easy heroism, as the movie displayed so beautifully. There are seasons for all things and a need for true rest, but the hard stuff is part of reality and doesn’t get solved overnight. Look at Gloria Steinem — nearly 70 years in the women’s movement and her work is just as relevant today. Poor thing deserves a break. There is not a reward, and certainly no finish line, but there is always hope.

• Fireflies — Do yourself a favor and go catch one. Best part of my days.
• Motomami — I’ve had Rosalía’s album on repeat since it came out.
• Grilling — From here on out, everything I cook this summer will be grilled. Including bread.
• My Fourth Time, We Drowned — This reminded me of the years I spent volunteering at immigration detention in Bangkok, except if it was also on fire and in a war zone. Hard read about how EU policy is endangering the lives of migrants and refugees; we have similar policies being enacted in the US.
• Why the U.K. is outsourcing its refugees — I’ve been enjoying the Nothing is Foreign podcast; this episode is an in-depth look at why relocating asylum seekers/refugees never works.
• Ukraine, War Refugees and the Problem of White Empathy — New Yorker conversation mulling over what I talked about in my last letter.
• Nick Cave at MCA — I hope to get to this retrospective in Chicago as well as Women Painting Women at The Modern in Ft. Worth this summer.