Facing the abyss

Early this morning, the University of Chicago invaded and tore down the student encampment set up to protest the university’s investment in corporations and institutions that support Israel’s attacks on Gaza. University police removed the protesters, destroyed the camp, and cleared the ground. All that is left of are the outlines of the tents where the grass has lightened from a lack of sun.

Overnight, Israel ordered a supposed evacuation of Rafah in preparation for its ground invasion, in spite of the fact that Palestinians have nowhere to go. They already evacuated to Rafah as the rest of Gaza was destroyed, and now some parts of northern Gaza face famine conditions. Many families have nowhere to turn, and so they will simply stay in Rafah and try the best they can to survive the all-out assault that has already killed at least 34,000 people.

Yesterday, we held a funeral for my uncle after his life was taken by Alzheimer’s disease. He was an active, intelligent man, but over time the disease took his understanding of time and location. He kept trying to leave his home and walk back to the town where he was born some 40 miles away, causing untold stress to my aunt and cousins. Eventually, they had to confine him to a memory care facility so that they knew that he was safe. By the end of this life, he no longer recognized many of those he loved, could not walk, and could not care for himself.

The conditions of our lives can push us into submission, taking away our safety, our dignity, our courage. Our plans, our ideas, our hopes are ground down into an unrecognizable version of themselves, then ground down further into dust. This is what despair feels like – when we sense that everything we care for has been ground away, when all that remains is the paper façade that, when torn, leaves us standing alone on the edge of an abyss.

And we must acknowledge that the abyss is real. The death of all those we love is real. Our death is real. The death of everyone and everything in this world is, by definition, real.

But the abyss is not all that is real. When we stare utterly into the abyss, we miss half of reality.

We must face the abyss, but we must also maintain our ability to turn our back on it. We must be able to see that, although all will eventually fall into the abyss, everything else exists now, and that means something. This world exists now. There is beauty in this world now. Our loves exist now. A wise person told me that grief is the price we pay for love, and there is so much truth in that. We feel the pain of the abyss because we feel the fullness of our love. I feel love for my uncle. I feel love for the students whose efforts toward justice have been temporarily scuttled. I feel love for the Palestinian people in the firing line in Rafah. And I feel grief for all of them, too. This grief can be an engine for us to do what we can in the time that we have.

I am no longer a religious person – I don’t believe that there is a place we all go to gather after we die. I know that my uncle is gone, but I also believe that, in a sense, he stands with my ancestors now, with my grandmothers and grandfathers, with their ancestors, protecting me and guiding me. I believe that they are all with me. And because they are with me, I am with them. Because of this mutual, ongoing relationship, I believe that in that sense, they are not gone. They are gone but not gone, here but not here, with me and within me and without me. Even when I feel alone, I am not alone.

Because we are not alone, I know that I must continue to speak. I know that many more Palestinians will be killed – are being killed as we speak. And I know that I must continue to speak up for them, to act for them, to do more for them, to speak to those around me about them. I can have those conversations in my own family. I can have those conversations with friends and colleagues. I can bring their voices where they cannot themselves go. And I know this is not enough. But I will keep trying to make it enough.

We will all fall into the abyss, and we must keep it in our consciousness in some sense. We all know this, although we may not live it every day. We must keep one eye on the abyss and one eye on the beauty of this world, and maybe we can see the abyss as its own kind of terrible beauty, because it means that what we have will not last forever, and it is made more precious to us by our knowledge of its passing. We must keep one eye on the abyss and one eye on the beauty, and we must act to protect and value the beauty for as long as we can.

I act in memory of my ancestors – those who would have agreed with my actions in life and those who wouldn’t – in recognition of those alive now who need my action, and in consciousness of the abyss. It is this divided and united consciousness that helps give this action meaning, and helps this action make a small impact on the beauty of this world today.