This is the Pendulum Swinging

How is it only the middle of January and things look this grim?

I’m writing this from a crammed seat on a plane, as my laptop battery dies. I apologize in advance for any spelling or grammatical errors - I didn’t give it the proper time to edit as I normally would, but I wanted to get it in your inboxes today.

No matter what happens tomorrow, the sun will still rise, even if there’s clouds. (Image: Jen Shaw)

So, 2025 eh?

What a start.

We’re less than a day away from the inauguration, and the hum of anxiety that’s been buzzing in the background since our Prime Minister resigned has turned itself up a notch.

It’s hard to believe it’s ONLY January 19. The holidays feel so long ago in the wake of all that has transpired in less than three weeks.

In the days that followed the resignation announcement, I was disappointed and also not surprised by the criticism. Those who have been calling for this for months, even years, now were critical of the decision to put party before country.

Only Green Party leader Elizabeth May showed any compassion for what a challenging and difficult thing it was. It was a tiny glimpse at humanity in a time, where it seems all those who have been tapped to “lead” in this country, seem to have very little of it.

The criticism is not uncalled for. We are possibly in such a precarious state, it feels valid to be angry and to level that at someone who has been on this path for some time and should’ve made this decision long before now.

But here we are. And take after take reminds us these people are not equipped to lead us.

“The era of quick fixes is over, no politician’s going to save us now.” Wrote Wendy Mesley on Women of Ill Repute before waxing nostalgia for the politicians of the past.

A sentiment shared by Paul Wells on the same day;

“Still, Canada’s last Conservative prime minister delivered a rebuttal of Trump that was orders of magnitude more on-topic and specific than anything we’ve yet heard from the next Conservative prime minister. There’s playing tough, and then there’s being tough.”

We were all thinking it. We are living in unprecedented times and the playbook doesn’t have these drills.

At my lowest point last week, I found myself wondering, “Is this it? Are we past the point of no return?”

Is the future we’ve feared here and things are going too fast and too outside control to reel them back in?

A maniacal man in the highest position of power. A couple billionaires pulling all the strings. Cities burning down. People no longer agreeing on what is reality.

It’s bleak.

Some would likely say, it’s always been this way. Billionaires have always had power in the White House. The reality we thought we were living was always just a fairy tale. Told to us by the men in power to keep us hoping and grasping and working and building something they could exploit and take for themselves.

Maybe I’m just waking up to the truth. But I’m certain the future I imagined is not the one being ushered in with this U.S. administration. What will come of all the wild statements? We will soon find out, so I will not hypothesize.

One thing is clear and is evident in everything I read now. The time for radical change is here and it starts with us.

Each of us, ourselves can make a difference.

And I know it sounds all apple pie and motherhood but there is no other way. We have been divided on purpose and the greatest rally is to come back together.

All around us, there are people who need our help and compassion right now.

I’m not even talking about strangers either. I’m talking about our own family members who are going through something, our friends and neighbours. The people who invite us to be part of their circle and we’ve been bailing on.

Now is not the time to bail. In this time when we are all craving belonging, these connections are the lifelines we need to weather the uncertainty, and we can all offer that.

We can also choose leaders who lead with compassion. It will be a bold choice, but if this the system we have, we can at least try to ask of it what we need.

This might mean straying from the party lines you’ve long associated yourself with. It might mean backing a courageous independent that chooses to put themselves out there to be a voice of change. It could also mean questioning the things we’ve long held to be the answer. And perhaps retrenching on those which were originally conceived of building community up.

Things like local government.

I just finished reading “Save Your City” by Diane Kalen-Sukra. Published in 2019, as a call to action to address toxic community culture, it feels now like a cautionary tale for the reality of 2025. The effect of social media. The breakdown in civic responsibility and divisiveness.

What was eye opening to me though is the role of local government, as it was originally conceived by the Greeks. It’s not about means for the province to download services or even for the maintenance of roads and bridge.

At it’s heart, it’s about people and specifically, people flourishing.

“… the role of local government is to foster community well-being through democratic local government, citizen engagement, and building a sense of community and prosperity. This was the view espoused by Aristotle. Namely, that civil society and the democratic city-state exists to ensure the human flourishing (Greek, eudamonia) of its citizens, who are wired by nature to live in community.” Writes Kalen-Sukra.

Well. Wired by nature to live in community.

The isolation and the attempts to divide and conquer are not the natural order. And for all the energy local government spends on important community infrastructure, does this not suggest the social infrastructure is in fact the most important part?

And in that, we all have a role. Civics are the responsibility of each of us because we are all part of community.

This is the great shift I would like to see come out of this transition. A shift back to one another and caring for the people around us and the planet that sustains us.

If in fact we are in a time of the great reset, as astrologers say, then it’s also worth noting 2025 will not just be a time of great uncertainty but of many shifts. The pendulum will swing to and fro. Brace yourself, because things will not settle out this year.

Having safety in one another and embracing small acts of kindness will keep us buoyant.

A colleague shared this beautiful ship analogy with me and I’ve saved it on my desktop;

“Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good.”

I am choosing to believe these are the things that will conquer the fearmongering and division. Love and compassion for one another.

Perhaps the greatest irony in all of this is that tomorrow, January 20, is also Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the U.S. In his speech to the Riverdale Church on April 4, 1967, he said:

“I’m convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives, and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism, and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered.”

How true these words are today, as they were then. It is not too late and we can still make this shift.