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Friday
Poet Tess Taylor has turned to Mary Oliver’s prose poem “Don’t Hesitate” to express the change in mood Democrats are experiencing since Kamala Harris became their nominee. Here’s the poem:
If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.
Taylor savors the final sentence, noting that
it reminds me that joy is maybe so much bigger than we often let it be. It’s no crumb but the whole pie, the full nutty loaf, the full raucous potluck. Joy might be the meal that sustains us. Noticing joy can be a guiding force, helping us name what matters in our lives. Joy, Oliver suggests, helps us discern what we love, and, just maybe, helps us figure out how we want to live.
Taylor finds that joy in the Harris/Walz campaign. “It’s telling,” she writes,
that one of the signs that Kamala Harris might be an awesome candidate is that right now, she helps us imagine a world where we are happy and happier together. She seems, well, joyful. As much as I love Harris, (and I really do), the end of this column is not really about her. It’s about the fact that it’s important to discover our joy. When we find that joy, it’s important to savor it. And it’s important to let that joy point us toward naming the big dreams about what our lives might feel like.
Perhaps Taylor is thinking of Harris’s laugh or how she and her running mate Tim Walz are calling themselves “happy warriors.” There’s certainly been a shift from the constant worry many of us were experiencing as Trump, bolstered by the mainstream media, battered Joe Biden over his age. Optics seemed to matter far more than substance.
The substance pretty much remains the same with the succession but the optics have changed radically. The slogan “Make America Laugh Again” appears to be driving Trump crazy. It’s as though we have spent years in an abusive relationship and have finally packed up our bags and walked out of the house.
The shift has me wondering if we have been far more traumatized by the Covid pandemic and the Trump presidency than we realized. We’ve been hunkered down so long in a defensive crouch—holding our breaths as we prayed that Joe Biden would hang on and that our Trumpian nightmare wouldn’t return—that we forgot what it was like to breathe freely.
Then the transition to Kamala Harris occurred and we realized (in Oliver’s words) that “life has some possibility left.” There’s no doubt that this “way of fighting back” against the darkness is far, far better “than all the riches or power in the world.” People are so starved for joy that they are packing into Harris and Walz’s rallies, with the result that we are watching Donald Trump melt down before our very eyes.
The moment seems even more powerful than the Barack Obama ascendancy and not because Harris is more charismatic than Obama (although she has plenty of charisma of her own). Rather, she and Walz are modeling the positivity that we’ve desperately needed. If Trump gave Americans a permission structure to indulge in grievance, Harris is giving us cause to hope again.
A sizable portion of the electorate sensed the instant that the joy began, which Oliver tells us is “often the case.” So don’t be afraid of joy’s plenty. Don’t fret about the honeymoon ending or about a possible letdown. Rather, stand fully in the joy. That crumb is enough, and more than enough, to make a full meal.
