What To Do When The World Is On Fire

The burning, the bearing witness with eyes wide open, can feel like hot coals combing the thin hairs on our skin. And that burning can feel even closer to the napes of our necks if you are living this life as a person of color, reckoning with all the ways the systems at play are structured to make succumbing to the hurt an easier solution rather than seeking safer ways out. Looking around, the fever pitch screams and cries for something, someone, anyone to come save us to change the course of direction can feel like waiting for the rapture. This kind of heat boils us down to the barest of thoughts, to the core of our being. We have been brought to tears, to our knees, watching and waiting, willing ourselves and each other past whatever the next wave of broken is, washing ourselves in the waters of change.

Change can feel chaotic. Disruptive. And so we will reach for the things closest to us to either heal us or harm us to distract us from the feelings we do not want to feel.

We will reach for our phones, streaming and swiping and screaming at the screens in front of us, hoping that the FOMO or grief will swallow us whole. We reach for our lovers, our exes, our audiobooks, our yoga mats, our passports, our remote controls, our mini diversions, anything to keep us entertained or disengaged from the stark reality of the world rearing its grief-ridden head on a day-to-day basis. But indifference to the pain and suffering we are processing is not the answer. And neither is avoidance. And neither is solitude.

For so long, we’ve shied away from confronting the fear, thoughts, and emotions that create the tension and friction that makes us uncomfortable, to keep away the ghosts that go squeak in the hallways of our hearts. For so long, we’ve believed that the work of all of this involved no one but ourselves, that it would be our job and our job alone to live with the hardships of this existence. But the lie that capitalism and society and so much of Western culture have told us, that we can drown ourselves in the detachment of it all, all by ourselves, has been proven time and time again to be false. Because the real remedy, the real solution, is community and confrontation.

Conflict is healthy and necessary, and even more important, is finding resolutions, together. The weight of the world—our bills, our loss, our grief, our tragedies; the news of the world, and the news of our daily lives—is not a weight we need to sit with alone.

This is why we must seek and find each other, lean into and onto each other, and be honest with those we feel safest around, about the conflicts residing in us.

The honesty also offers those around us the opportunity to do the same. We cannot assume those that we love won’t have the capacity. We can’t assume they know and understand what we’re going through. We have to acknowledge where the gaps may exist and allow others the chance to fill them. The problems will not solve themselves. The questions will not be answered in a vacuum. The only way out is with each other, hands held, preparing for what may lie ahead.

When the world is on fire, the best we can do is turn inward and turn to each other.

---

People need other people. You are not weak for wanting or needing support. If you’re seeking professional help, we encourage you to use TWLOHA’s FIND HELP Tool. If you reside outside of the US, please browse our growing International Resources database. You can also text TWLOHA to 741741 to be connected for free, 24/7 to a trained Crisis Text Line counselor. If it’s encouragement or a listening ear that you need, email our team at [email protected].