Strangely Benevolent
My partner said in a recent post:
“The world seems strangely benevolent today, in spite of everything going on. It’s 70 degrees and sunny.”
Cue the obvious “it’s always sunny in Arizona” joke, but… really. The most awful things can be going on in the world - sometimes awful things even happen here - but the sun will always shine cheerfully here in a disturbing false sense of security.
But is it false?
John Pavlovitz wrote a post about hope. In it was a line that crystallized some things for me:
“Hope, as best as I can tell, is a steadfast, stubborn refusal to believe that the present is permanent, that life is a perpetual spiral downward, that all is irretrievably lost, that something surprising or beautiful can’t still happen on the horizon of history.”
The other day I went hiking in the Phoenix Mountains Preserve, a popular urban hiking spot and little Saguro-dotted oasis of wild desert nestled right in the center of the city. I love the network of trails that allow you to create your own path, maybe even a different path each time, as long as you keep your cardinal directions straight - seems like a broader metaphor for life.
I came to a particular peak about half as tall as the towering nearby Piestewa Peak, which provided a spectacular view of nearly the entire western half of this sprawling metropolis. It was sunny. The hum of the city was low white noise underneath the quiet.
It was oddly peaceful. Knowing that the largest city in my home state, 1,200 miles away, is being torn apart by ICE. I know it’s only a matter of time before they come here in such numbers. They’re already operating here more covertly, without the media fanfare. But in this moment, from my high up perch, the city seemed peaceful, idyllic even.
I sat there and I set down the grief I’ve held for the past year, and thought about all the good things that have crossed my path. Life is full of cruelty, but it is also full of benevolence. It is full of violence and kindness at once. It is full of hatred and love. It is full of danger and safety.
We can never know which of these things will happen to us at any moment. We are touched by both the dark and the light throughout our lives, without much rhyme or reason. It is that uncertainty and that contradiction that distresses us perhaps even more than the darkness itself.
In Alcoholics Anonymous, one of the most fundamental things we learn, is to live life one day at a time. That’s the only thing we can do. If we look too far into the future, it seems daunting. It can seem overwhelming to have to think about how we will get through the next month or the next three years or the next decade. We think we have control, but we don’t. All we can do is focus on today, then hopefully get up and do it again tomorrow. Breaking the task of living into smaller, manageable steps.
For today, I am safe. I am fed. I am employed. I am loved. I am on top of a mountain overlooking my city, and it was my own two determined feet that got me there. There were so many times of uncertainty and danger and suffering in my past, and here I am despite them. This country has been through many violent and dark and shameful moments in our past, and somehow through it all we managed to slowly, incrementally, build progress over time, even if that progress at times seems fragile. If there is no hope of more progress, no future benevolence, why keep living? Why get up tomorrow? Why not give up? I’ve certainly been tempted to give up on life before, but I have not listened to that voice in a long time.
Without hope, we have nothing to live for.
It is strange to think, when I am up in the mountains, that my existence is one of our nation’s most vitriolic political debates. Up here, I’m as uncomplicated as the rocks and the trees and cactus and sunshine. I just am. And I think I have to hold onto that through these next years. The laws coming down can say whatever they want about me, but I know who I am.
And while there will be very real material effects on the lives of people like me, the administration’s real goal is to break us. To get us to go willingly into the closet, into detransition, even into suicide. They are hoping we will make it easy for them and do their dirty work for them. Living in fear is what they really want, and every day that we don’t is another day that we’ve won. I know it sounds so trite and empty to say that, but I really want to keep saying it because it’s actually starting to click for me. They can take so many things away from me but they cannot take away my pride, my love, my joy, my courage - and indeed those are the things that are going to save us. There is nothing a bully can’t stand more than seeing that his fear tactics are not working.
I knew I was taking a risk when I decided to transition in 2022. I knew I was voluntarily giving up safety and privilege, and I would never as long as I live get that safety or privilege back. It was a necessary trade to stop hiding the truth inside me where it was beginning to make me sick. I knew that safety and privilege were a tiny price to pay for having a life worth living, for being a real person instead of an actor playing a role I didn’t choose. Even if that life were more stressful, less certain, maybe even shorter.
The current political climate notwithstanding, the universe has been surprisingly benevolent in the nearly 4 years since I took this leap. I knew I would be happier as a man, but I never expected the depths or the vibrance of the happiness that awaited me. Being Shawn has allowed me to show up in this world fully, with a genuine smile and an exuberant energy that has brought so many good things to me - a better job, a solid group of friends, a wonderful partner for whom I don’t have to hide any piece of myself out of shame or a fear of being unloveable. I’m able to give so much more of myself now that I don’t have a script of living a lie running in the back of my head at all times and losing the mental bandwidth that eats up.
I simply can’t go through the next three (or more) years being tossed around by every headline. This won’t last forever. The only certainty about life is that all things are temporary. I refuse to lose years of my life and peace to this orange blowhard. He’s not worth that. The more we show him we are anchored in peace and courage, the weaker he gets.
Stay anchored.
