I Didn’t Choose this Future!
When the San Francisco Bay Area shut down in mid-March of 2020, I was almost relieved. The previous few weeks had involved way too many unaccustomed choices: Should we be eating in a restaurant? How close should we get to other people in the grocery store? Were we really going to that concert, or was it going to be cancelled? At least with Shelter in Place I didn’t have to wrestle with those questions for a while.
On that last day of the Before Times, I blithely said to the school crossing guard on my corner, “See you in three weeks!” I knew SIP might be extended, but I couldn’t imagine it would last more than a year. No one knew much about COVID-19 or how many times the public health advice would change as clinicians and public health experts learned more.
By May of 2020 I was wondering whether that crossing guard was okay. I worried about friends and family on the front lines, about closed local businesses and their workers, about clients who had been in transition before March and those who were afraid they were about to be furloughed or laid off. I wondered whether all my experience and knowledge meant anything in the changed world of work. I asked colleagues whether I needed to change my business name. How could I use the words “Chosen Futures” when we were all scrambling to adapt and keep the chaos at bay?
And then George Floyd was killed, and I could no longer ignore that we were in the midst of multiple crises at once: Pandemic, income inequality made worse by the pandemic, racist practices and institutions which have persisted through decades of reform efforts, all in the midst of a bitter presidential race and a California fire “season” which had become year-round. My carefully constructed “new normal,” which kept me relatively safe and allowed my client work to continue online, wasn’t big enough or flexible enough to accommodate my values about civic engagement, fair practices, or the kind of world I want my grandchildren to live in. In order to be honest with myself, I needed to choose bigger futures, whether I liked it or not.
We choose our futures by the daily choices we make, by where we place our attention, our time, our money. Futures become reality because we set priorities, pay attention even when we want to turn away, join with kindred spirits to accomplish more than we can alone. My personal future and our collective futures are works in progress, built by our accumulated actions. I have redirected some of my time and energy, become more active in the San Francisco Black-Jewish Unity Group, changed the way I read the news and apply my historical knowledge. I am learning to do more than theorize about social change, learning to better apply my knowledge of personal change to the collective political arena, learning how to be more active in service of my values.
San Francisco public schools finally reopened last month. After thirteen months, the crossing guard and I said to each other, “I’m so glad to see you!” We don’t know each other well, but we acknowledge that we are in this particular unwanted future together, that we care about the children attending this particular school, about their particular families, many of whom have struggled in the past year. Neither of us chose the big events of the last fourteen months, but each of us has the power to act to choose our future.