Your Misery Will Not Save the World
A Black Eyed Story
Pablo Picasso. Blue Period (circa 1902)
Find an audio reading of this Black Eyed Story above.
Dear Lovely, Kind, Wise Readers:
I say this with my heart full of all the love and light my whole self can swallow: Get over yourselves. Your misery will not save the world.
As you read that, I hope you heard my voice as a heaven-kissed whisper with harp strings gently plucking in the distance and a choir ensemble softly singing while wrapped in a cloud.
Get over yourselves. Your misery will not save the world.
Consider these words to be my Miranda-Hobbes-Sex and the City-Season 6-Episode 4 offering.
Remember when Carrie’s boyfriend, Berger, enlightened her bestie, Miranda, with the phrase, “He’s just not that into you,” and we were all aghast yet riveted by his words? Well, I hope when you read my words, you were as intrigued as Miranda was. She found “He’s just not that into you” to be a revelatory, revolutionary, game-changing, plain truth about everything she ever needed to know about her dating life.
In regards to your activist life, may you receive “Get over yourselves – your misery will not save the world” with her same relief, gratitude and newfound freedom. I hope you’ll respond exactly like she did and, in a dumbstruck daze, wistfully consider my words and say: “It is the most liberating thing I have ever heard. Think how much time in therapy I could have saved over the last 20 years if I had known this.”
Pablo Picasso. Blue Period (circa 1902)
Get over yourselves. Your misery will not save the world.
Look… I know some of you have been told that you’re a bad person—alright, most specifically a bad White person—because you bought tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras concert, or you went to a friend’s house for a dinner party and everyone there was White, or you enrolled your kid in some fancy pants elite prep school with not a single Black or Brown person on the board, or you simply enjoyed a mani-pedi without thinking about the plight of the unhoused perched outside the salon door, or you did a little dance when Miss Swift (and her cat) were heralded by Time Magazine on their coveted Time’s 100 cover.
Perhaps you were internet-trolled or shamed because you did one or all of those things. Or even worse, you didn’t sign that petition. You didn’t donate to that cause. You didn’t show up to that protest. You didn’t join in on the cancelling of that person, place, or thing that everyone (except you) agreed must be cancelled. You didn’t buy Black, or Indigenous, or Asian, or Brown. You didn’t read that book about the history of the history of all the horrible things this country or some other country has done. You and I both know I could go on and on and on.
Listen, (White) friend, I know that you’ve been called out more times than you can count. And I would imagine that you’ve felt like giving up trying to be a better ally, be more conscious of your privilege, be better informed about all the things. I know it must sometimes feel like you’re damned if you do and damned if don’t – so much so that there are days when you find yourself huddled in a corner too scared to move and damn sure too scared to cry out for help because of the White-tears-shame of it all.
Get over yourselves. Your misery will not save the world.
Pablo Picasso. Blue Period (circa 1902)
If we’re looking to save the world, we’re gonna need to start with
a huge sprinkling of magic, humility and wonder.
If every one of the 10 million Swifties who went to Taylor Swift’s Eras concert showed up at the Capitol to protest <pick a grievance and insert the cause of your choice>, I promise you, not even that kind of turn up and turn out would “fix” said cause or grievance.
Remember the day after Donald Trump was inaugurated in 2017 when thousands upon thousands of women wearing vagina hats on their heads filled the streets of Washington DC in protest? It drew nearly 500,000 in DC. Somewhere between three to four million showed up to protests at every state capital. Hoards of others showed up to protests in other countries.
At the time it was the largest protest in America, only to be surpassed by the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 which drew an estimated 26 million people during a freaking pandemic. And guess what? Twenty-six million people didn’t stop nearly 300 Black people from being killed by the police in 2023, let alone O’Shae Sibley or Jordan Neely from being killed by civilians. And guess who’s running for president again?
Friends, these protests were glorious and beautiful moments of collective courage and community advocacy. They are important markers of our history that have led to positive changes. But have any of those protests “fixed” our systemic issues? Did they save the world? No. Not even close.
But they were absolutely worth doing and they are worth repeating again and again if for no other reason than to collectively lament. It’s good to see us be outraged at the same things, collectively call a spade a spade, and hold each other up when the powers-that-be try to gaslight and silence us. In an often vicious world, it’s imperative that we show up, link arms, and let each other know that we are not alone.
However, none of us can spend our lives protesting and boycotting and advocating 24/7. Each of us also has to find a way to live a whole and complete life that includes joy. Sometimes that joy is going to look like going to see Taylor Swift, or booking a flight to see Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour in London, or getting swept up in Barbenheimer mania, or just staying home and bingeing The Golden Bachelor. Perhaps it looks like doing all of the above. Because the truth is that while protests and advocacy and activism show our humanity, all the frivolous stuff in between reminds us that we are human beings having human experiences.
Do I want you to show up like you would for a Taylor Swift concert to a protest and wage a war on guns? Sure. That’d be amazing. But I would hope that you could manage to do both. And if you had to choose between the two, I hope you would choose whichever event would give you the fuel to continue to love the world so much that you will gladly keep fighting the demons that attack all that is good. Which one you choose will depend on any number of things that frankly aren’t anyone’s business but your own.
Would I love to see you be just as excited about The Color Purple movie as you were about the Barbie movie? Of course!!! I hope you would buy a ticket to both. But if for some reason one or neither of them appeals to you, that’s fine too. I don’t care. What I do care about is if you can find a movie that does excite and delight you. May that delight spill over into all that you do because in this sometimes dreary old world we desperately need delight. It is such a magical and healing human emotion. It keeps us humbled with wonder, and if we’re looking to save the world, we’re gonna need to start with a huge sprinkling of magic, humility and wonder.
And would I be thrilled to see you support more Black, Asian, Brown and Indigenous creators? Yes, but not if we become a charity or a side project by your doing so. Not if there’s even a hint of false humility and false compassion at play. Not if you’re doing it to avoid looking at yourself and your baggage and your damage and your complicity in any systemic structures of hierarchy. No creator wants anyone to be coerced into supporting their work. Taylor Swift doesn’t want that kind of fanbase and neither do we. Your misery, your guilt, your shame won’t save us. It might pacify our bank account for a time but it won’t sustain us.
There’s a little bible story (now hang in there with me, I promise I’m just gonna make a quick point, not lead a bible study or preach a sermon) about when Jesus tells his ride-or-dies all about the terrible things about to happen to him. He forecasts his demise and then tells them not to worry about it because the Holy Spirit is coming and so it’s all good. It all sounds preposterous, most especially because he’s telling them that he’s gonna die, but not really, because he’s going back to his father, but they can’t come with him. It’s ludicrous, especially because he uses a weird metaphor of a woman in labor to try to explain it all. It’s confusing and a bit too much. They have questions but he doesn’t answer them. Instead, he ends with this: The world will have its problems. It will always be full of sorrow and trauma and suffering and oppression—but don’t let those things overwhelm you. Don’t let those things be the thing that determines how you will live in the world. Be confident, be brave, be resilient. I have overcome the world. Don’t worry about it.
Now, whether you take his word verbatim or you find the whole business of any sacred text hogwash, here’s the thing about this little story that has remained absolutely true: there’s oppression and hurt in the world regardless of Jesus’s story. Jesus came and the powers that be didn’t change and the world kept on moving and hierarchies continued to erect their towers and humanity continued to be both beautiful and awful at the same time and the one guy who many believe is the One to save us all wasn’t concerned about fixing it all. So, who are we to think that our finite acts of courage could do better than his acts of courage which, according to many, were miraculous and legendary and eternal?
Get over yourselves. Your misery will not save the world.
But your joy? Could it save the world? Could your humility save the world? Could your vulnerability? Your self-love? I don’t know, but I don’t think it can hurt.
We only have this one life to live, and Taylor Swift’s Eras tour comes once in a lifetime. I hope you bought your ticket. I hope you enjoyed the show and I hope it was just the uptick you needed to keep wanting to do better and be better and love your fellow human with true sincerity – not shame or guilt. Because another wise thing Jesus said was: love others as you love yourself.
And if tickets to a concert are how you love yourself, and this love of self will give you the strength to face the world and do the work—the really hard work—then I say go do that and may God bless you in the name of Jesus, Barbie and Taylor Swift!
Get your life. Find your joy. Your misery will not save the world.
Marcie, you are the gift we don’t deserve but at the same time the one that we need. Your generosity is overwhelming. Thank you for this post. ❤️
Marcie <3 As always, thank you. This was a firm but kind message. It has taken years to walk back the knee jerk shame reaction, realizing it doesn't help anyone. We have to continue to remember how much we love life and how good it can be to be grounded in our conviction that others deserve the same thing.