The Feeling Behind the Feeling

Last Friday, when Israel imposed a complete blackout on Gaza’s communication, I felt so impotent as to be fully disabled. What inconceivable atrocities would be enacted now, given what had already come—the obliterated hospitals, the white phosphorus, the dead upon dead upon dead? All week, the watching world’s panic had intensified and now it blasted through into a void, into total helplessness, an enveloping horror that defied language, made a mockery of calls and protests and donations and posts. This is how I experienced it through my friends and community; all we could do was convey the news. Gaza has gone dark. All communications are cut. We were 5,600 miles away in a country led by oligarchs who would just as soon we die, too, if there were not need for our labor and taxes to make more weapons of war. The president’s donors shout down and hiss at a Rabbi speaking for peace. Every senator votes to support Israel after two weeks of Palestinian genocide. Verified constituents are written off as outside agitators. What are we doing? What can we do?

I’d seen it said, convincingly, that the least everyone owes Gazans is to bear witness to their massacre, to share the stories of those murdered and on the precipice of annihilation, to name the destruction for what it is. Consuming real news, which can only be done online and mainly through social media, began to feel like my responsibility, as did disseminating it. But “the hunger for news eats people up,” said peace activist Daniel Berrigan in 1974, after noting that being “well-informed” rarely results in change: “for twelve years we saw on our screens what we were doing to the Vietnamese people. It’s very questionable that that changed anything.” Governments do what they want, whether the people are forced into miseducation or allowed to wander toward reality. Among the myriad parallels between October 2023 and September of 2001 (and all that came after) I found myself thinking mainly of the marches. I was a teenager then but I recall, acutely, how transparently evil the Iraq invasion was, how unpopular, how crudely manufactured the reasoning, how grotesque to see it broadcast live on 24-hour news. The information—the unelected president, the Halliburton-owned VP, the permanent “orange” threat level—was there at the time, as the information lays in plain sight now. The proof is here. The truth is here. Why is the truth not enough. Why doesn’t truth work.

I’ve not seen anything in the past three weeks that altered my position on what’s happening in Palestine yet I operated from the subconscious notion that if I just found the perfect post—the right citation or quote or video—I could break through to people whose political engagement I never trusted in the first place. Pressure to accomplish this made me manic. The people who were silent largely stayed silent while my resentment of them grew. I was disgusted by them. I was disgusted with myself for knowing or caring about them.

All my negative emotions collected in this pouch of judgment and then poison bubbled out as paranoia: was this person’s critical, hectoring post about me? Why did only 1/16th of my followers see my Instagram stories? Was I shadow banned, or were people purposefully avoiding what I shared? Should I behave differently for “the algorithm”? It was humiliating. It was a waste of time and energy. There was a feeling behind the feeling of hate that grew in me, and that was the experience of profound powerlessness; being online felt like drinking gallons of my own powerlessness. And I fixated on altering the behavior of a few people in my social vicinity because I despaired of having any impact on those directly responsible.

My fixation on these people, my carrying them so close to me, blotted out the millions who are showing up. As Tasbeeh Herwees said, it’s a great personal loss to not partake in “a galvanizing moment of human connection and solidarity across communities.” Like Tasbeeh, I believe this outcry is exceptional, in my lifetime certainly but maybe in the history of our species, to have so many disparate people all over the globe united in their support for a group of colonized people. “If I’m being transformed by this, I know there are others being transformed by this too,” wrote Jezz Chung. I don’t want to be anywhere else but with them. So why would I give my attention to anyone else?

Once I realized what was happening, I asked myself if it would make a difference if the people I’d fixated on suddenly began dialing their reps or attending protests. I have no confidence that it would. But I also asked myself if I were to see someone I loved in trouble, if someone I loved were dying and I had no way to save them, would I still try to help? Of course. An angel herself could descend and tell me it’s hopeless and I still wouldn’t shrug and sit down. I’m not writing in favor of inaction but self-awareness.

It’s destabilizing, disordering, to sense resignation or indifference right now—even more destabilizing, I think, than to see the outright war-mongering and genocidal rhetoric. I understand it can make you crazy, which is why it’s important not to dwell on it. To acknowledge it, of course, but not to make it your entire field of vision. The people I’ve seen angriest online, the ones really leaning into their rage and becoming increasingly convinced of their self-righteousness, also seem the most confused about what to do. They are surer than anyone else of what not to do; they are very quick to tell everyone around them that they’ve said something wrong or insufficient, that they’ve been clocked as a selfish fraud. It doesn’t feel good to be around. I don’t think it helps Palestinians. “When you are angry,” says Thich Nhat Hanh, “you are not lucid enough for your action to make sense.” That’s why it’s necessary to sometimes “stop, to concentrate, and to become oneself again.” Anger can be a part of us without becoming the whole of us.

“I have been practicing a lot with recognizing exactly the feelings that are there, such as anger, that manifested in me: sadness, suffering, injustice, grief,” said Brother Pháp Hũu on Saturday, when asked about how we are supposed to bear what’s happening.

If a monk of 22 years is struggling, it’s ok for us to struggle, to feel powerless, which is not the same as behaving as if we are powerless. Hearing this reassured me, so I wanted to pass it along to you.