How to Survive This? Look Local.

It’s a terrifying time. The little things are the only way out.

Much of America has spent this week with its collective hair on fire. It was impossible not to be touched by it in one way or another. Friends whose children have special medical needs anguished whether money for expensive medical procedures and life-saving drugs would still be available. Non-profits and charitable organizations, people whose sole calling is to help people in need, called emergency meetings to figure out how to survive a sudden evaporation of vital federal funding. We suffered our first fatal commercial plane crash in more than 15 years, a horrific tragedy that killed 67 people, and when we turned to our government for answers, or at least some sort of solace, we got incompetence, cruelty and downright wickedness. My father, who like most people has tried to take a break from politics and the news but quite reasonably turned on his television Thursday afternoon to find out why the plane fell out of the sky, was so haunted by the official response — ”you want me to go swimming?” — that he could barely speak. It sure looks like a drug addict has orchestrated a governmental takeover, with the goal seemingly a fundamental teardown of the American financial system. It’s absolutely terrifying out there. We all had our fears. But it’s happening very quickly.

Figuring out how to respond to all this — how to try to help, how to combat it, how to keep one’s wits, how not to drown in it all — has become in many ways the fundamental struggle of this age. It is a question I find myself struggling with every day, and particularly in weeks like this one. I have my own life, my own family, my own obligations, my own mental health to worry about; I cannot neglect what is directly in front of me, what I am responsible for, because I have lost myself in the madness of the current state of the nation. But I also cannot stick my head in the sand, myopically tunnel-visioned on those closest to me, while those outside that carefully curated field of vision suffer, and the barbarians inch ever closer to the gate. How do you balance that? How do you distract yourself from the chaos of living through unsettled times without abdicating your place in them? How do you help when you are discouraged, when it feels like forces are so aligned against…