All This Could Be Different

by Sarah Thankam Mathews

wp get to own their lives. they get to feel like their lives belong to only them

How was anyone expected to dream loftily about the future when the present ground them down to powder and nothingness?

This was the thing, when your politics all started as abstract theory, as axioms at their most distilled. You had to negotiate the growing gaps between the principles you railed about in darkened bars and how you actually lived.

Do you wake up each day for yourself or for someone else? Do you believe your life to be your own?

Because we all are brought to our knees at some point in this life. The idea that no one will be there for you when that happens—my heart cannot take that. We want you to have family, to have somebody.

We create our lives saying one small yes to one small thing at a time. We create the world that way.

What nobody told me when I was a very young person was that obedience, fearful toeing of every line, chasing every kind of safety, would not save you.