F*ck it!
Years ago, living in community, one of our members was one of those true-blue, letter-of-the-law people who anguished when she did something poorly. We offered her the two little magic words - f*ck it - and made her a get-out-of-jail-free card with check boxes for a whole string of “its”.
F*ck them, f*ck her, f*ck him, f*ck this, f*ck that, f*ck everything.
It always broke the spell.
Yesterday, I woke with those two little magic words on my lips.
I, too, suffer from an unreasonable sense of responsibility that has been triggered for months by the gap between how destructive the DJT administration has been and how bupkis I can do about it.
I’ve tried many approaches - community organizing, trainings, reading others’ rousing calls to action, staying informed in my progressive/liberal lane, writing, and did I say writing. Nothing satisfied, not because they aren’t good little drops that, together with a hundred million other drops, will eventually wear away the rock and a hard place we are in. But the belief that I might find that chink in the armor, that blind side, that abracadabra that would stop the harm - that’s what was making me listless - even with long lists of things I can do.
So I woke from dreams of being attacked by marauding barbarians and said, perhaps out loud, “F*ck it.” No more moping, cowering, and sense of helplessness. I’m taking the reins. Living my life. Laughing in the face of the dark shadow of the Abiyoyo giant. Acting as if it doesn’t matter if I assess that my drop matters, what matters is casting fear out of my mind, possibly again and again, and showing up in ways that bring me vigor and joy.
F*ck “making a difference” as if I had an inside track on what makes the planets move and what might move the phalanx of DJT’s army of the groveling. F*ck it that what I want to do - write a solo show about aging, travel, grow food, sit in circles with friends and have opinions out loud, maybe louder - isn’t going to move mountains.
F*ck it, I’m taking care of myself, my tasks of living as well as my body, mind, will, creativity, and sass. I’m in the middle of a CERT class on preparedness when fire, flood, earthquake and more happen near me, cinching up my old survival skills and getting clear-eyed. I’m buffing up other skills, exercising my right to be a competent human, no matter whether I will ever save any day.
I know f*ck it is one of the privileges of being old, growing beyond the demands of the middle years to show up and pony up and make money and raise a family. I’m free, I can let go - in this case, of unreasonable standards.
Strangely, I have found a number of ways I might serve that I don’t have to measure against impact. I’m tracking and amplifying the Global Sumud Flotilla sailing east across the Mediterranean with food and medicine for Gaza. I’m moved by their sobriety, and their courage and putting a puff in their sails. With the standard of stopping the harm, my usual ability to scan and act has become dull, but f*ck it, I’ll do what I can. The point isn’t stopping, it’s participating. The Global Sumud Flotilla inspires me, and has inspired the dock workers union in Italy to declare a strike if the Flotilla is stopped and harm comes to them. Solidarity! Now I’m energized for another commitment - MCing a fundraiser for Gaza in my community.
When I undertook writing Your Money or Your Life, I called a few published authors to find out how to write a whole book. The two pieces of advice I got that I applied religiously are:
Do a daily rhythmic activity you enjoy to relax your mind. I wrote draft one of Your Money or Your Life on the coast of California, next to the Salt Point State Park, in the season of huckleberries. The bushes were dripping with berries. Every day I put on a little backpack backwards, on my chest, hiked up, bent laden branches into my pack and tickled in a pie’s worth of berries. Back I’d go to bake a pie. Every day, a pie, every day consumed by my groups of friends. And the next morning, writing.
“If you are writing below your standards, lower your standards,” one writer told me. That saved my life and turned me into a happy wordsmith willing to knit and unravel words every day - which, with my collaborators, added up to a book. I’m lowering my standards now.
Living through an authoritarian capture of the government isn’t a sprint. It is a long distance run. Pacing is everything, not competition or even finishing. There is no finish line. There are only the actions that come out of love, soul and sass.
So, with a wide “f*ck it” smile on my face, I enter another day.
And f*ck it, I’m pressing publish. No maundering or fussing. Here it is. Take or leave it. And thanks for listening. Again and again as we all muddle through, finding our way, flashlight piercing the darkness.
Love this! My sister-in-law refers to your phrase as “the short form of the Serenity Prayer”.
Right, all your worries go in the fuck-it bucket.