#renewingcalm

To the left is the journal I kept in Fall of 2001. Yes, I decorated it myself. I was freshly fifteen and very creative.

To the right is the entry I wrote after the Twin Towers fell in New York. Spoiler alert: my opinions then weren’t groundbreaking, but you can see I was too shaken to remember what the date was. 

At the time, I knew that I wasn’t doing it justice, the same way I knew that I was watching history unfold on my screen. In this entry, I sounded like what I was: a scared teenager, reckoning with the beginning of a big grief. 

I’m telling you this, because if you are a young person, you too may be sitting at the edge of emotions you don’t yet have words for. That’s okay. 

Some days, history-in-the-making is not for writing about. Some days, history-in-the-making is for feeling into. 

I’ll explain what I mean: 

On 9/12/2001, I walked into my algebra classroom, still cracked open from the day before. I threw my backpack on the floor and myself in my desk, and then I overheard one of my classmates in the back row say, “We should just nuke them all.” 

There is no reason why I should remember this—except for the silent event that took place next. 

A tide of grief swept in and cleared out everything else I had been worrying about, and my thoughts crystallized. 

I immediately understood a couple things: 

- My country was going to go to war, because the feelings of a sophomore boy weren’t too much different from the feelings of a politician (even if the latter dressed up their words into strategies). 

- There was no army to fight, so this war would be messy. 

- Those who would be hurt the most would be the regular Afghani people, villagers just trying to live their lives, who had nothing to do with hijacked planes, who were just as afraid of armed zealots as I was. 

Then I realized something else: No wonder the environment is in so much trouble. Humans don’t even value other humans, much less other kinds of life.

This may sound extraordinarily depressing. but buried under these thoughts was a deeper belief:

If a problem is created by humans, it can be solved by humans. 

And with all the optimism of an idealistic fifteen-year-old, I believed that even this was a solvable problem.

The fall of my senior year, I wrote a novel for fun. It was a Romeo-and-Juliet-style fantasy romance between two kids from factions that had been warring for millennia. It was driven by the central question: how does an ancient war get started? What would it take to end it? 

That spring, I also took an elective course from my AP US History teacher called “War and Peach.” I titled one of my essays, “Choosing your battles,” and I reread it yesterday.

Here’s the conclusion of that essay:

“War is…a distraction from the conflict that we only notice during peacetime, the only worthwhile conflict: ourselves. Right and wrong are not external forces; they are internal forces. 

“We fight invisible foes (individualism and unity; selfishness and generosity; evil and good) that churn our insides and boil our own blood without spilling it. We are—in fact—our own battlefields, the only ones we need.”

Since I thought I knew everything at seventeen, my tone in the essay is judgmental, as if the problem only existed outside myself. College would later teach me that I was ignoring my own internal battlefields. (FYI, the teachers on this weren’t my classes or my professors, but the problems I created for myself when I first lived away from home.

But I still believe a version of that conclusion. Slightly revised and expanded to include other forms of conflict, it was become one of the guiding beliefs of the past decade and a half of my life. 

For example, the Ever Afters—the series I started at 23—was born from it.

In those books, the main heroine and main villain are markedly similar, but the heroine has an inner journey she values as much as her exterior battles. The villain, on the other hand, never paid much attention to her interior battlefield, instead just attacking in as many ways as possible as if survival depended on it. 

Writing some novels is obviously not a complete solution to war and/or humans not valuing life. But these books have helped people—young readers have written to tell me so.

So, if you are feeling deeply today, remember you can always do something, even if you aren’t able to solve the events playing out on your screen right now, even if it takes longer than you expect to know what to do. Long-standing problems require long-range problem-solving as much as immediate action.

Notice what bothers you the most in what you’re seeing, and resolve to be part of the change. 

One person trying to help doesn’t always make a dent in the problems of a globe.

But change can come from a globe of individuals each taking on a piece of the puzzle, each helping in their own way, chipping away at a problem together until something better is left in its place. 

When I suggest, “Make something,” it doesn’t need to be anything as time-consuming as a novel.

Sometimes, I make something random, just for fun. Like that throne of SNOW from earlier this month.

Here's another example: this blue and orange heart.

Last July, I got some roses and hydrangeas from Trader Joe’s and made a bouquet. Sadly, the flowers only lasted a couple days before they started to wilt.

When given a story that makes me a bit sad, I figure out a way to rearrange it into one I like better. It honestly started with movie endings I didn't like, but I've since turned it into an everyday practice. Sometimes it’s a legit challenge, and sometimes it’s just a game.

Wilting flowers became a game. As in, What do I do with THESE?

My friend Angela once told me to return flowers to nature after they’ve been part of your home. There’s a park by my house, attached to an art museum, which was closed at the time (due to the pandemic). I thought to myself: are these just wilted flowers? Or are they materials for a completely unsanctioned, 100% biodegradable art installation at the park?

Hence, the blue-and-orange heart. I found a dove feather on the way, picked it up, and hid it under the petals as I worked.

You can make meaning out of anything, but art doesn’t have to be lofty.

Sometimes, it can just be fun.

It deeply entertained me to do this. It made me happy to think of people wandering the park, coming across the blue and orange heart and wondering at what the hiccups it was doing there. I hoped it entertained them too--or just brought them distraction from their troubles for a moment, maybe even a little peace.

The heart was completely gone within a week (I checked)—the petals faded, now indistinguishable from the brown leaves fallen from the trees above.

But the memory remains, as well as the meaning I made from it.

Flowers that faded too quickly was a mildly sad story, too unremarkable to mention. Then I turned it into one I liked better, one I enjoyed so much that I shared it with you.

Like I said, with turning sad stories into better ones: Sometimes it’s a game. Sometimes it’s a challenge.

But the games give you both the confidence necessary to take on the challenges.

So, again, if you get inspired to create something random, whether it's a heart out of petals, a throne out of snow, or something else, let yourself make it, just for fun.

Wherever you are, take a breath. A deep one.

Good. Now, take another.

Remember, sweet ones: wherever you are, whatever is happening, you’re in a story. The story isn’t over yet. As long as you are alive, it continues to shift under your feet, and you’ll change and grow within it.

Let’s consider an often-used storytelling device called “raising the stakes,” where the challenges within the story increase in intensity, which escalates the story’s overall tension. The phrase “out of the frying pan, into the fire” fits here, but after that, you’ll need to add: “then into the bonfire, and maybe even a wildfire after that.”

If a storyteller handles “raising the stakes” poorly, it’ll just feel like the situation in a story is going from bad to worse, and the characters are getting pummeled for no good reason.

But if a storyteller handles “raising the stakes” skillfully, the story will feel like the characters are growing with each challenges they face, no matter how tough it gets.

History is just one more story, sweet ones.

Just the same way you are living your own story, history is played out by a group of people rather than individuals. National histories, for example, are played out by every single individual who participates in that nation, and global histories are written by literally everyone.

The term “Current Events” is just another name for “History-in-Progress,” and each of us are participating, regardless of your age, background, heritage, and official citizenship status according to the current laws.

In the past few years, and especially in the past year (and even just today), we have seen the stakes get raised in our history-in-progress. Tension has escalated as event after event hits our awareness—both in your personal life and on the collective stage—leaving us all feeling pummeled.

But stories aren’t defined by the raising stakes.

Stories are defined by how individuals RESPOND to the raising stakes.

That response may not happen at the same instant that the stakes get raised. It make take a week, a month, a year, a decade. With some stakes, especially events happening in your formative years, you may spend the rest of your life responding to what has happened.

As long as you are alive, you have the ability to respond to what is happening around you—whether it is as individual as your own story or as collective as the history of the country you live in.

Today, if you have fear, anger, and/or other forms of grief raging through you, make some room for them. In the immediate aftermath of an event, meeting your emotional needs is always a healthy response. It allows you to have enough bandwidth to integrate your experience. After integration, you’re better equipped to find the most impactful and sustainable way to respond, the one that fits you, your talents, and your vision.

Even pausing for a few deep breaths helps, which is why I opened with that.

So, right now, take another deep breath, and take care of yourselves, sweet ones.