So, last week I got to pop into New York for a few days. I met with an amazing NYU professor, Amy Huber, who studied with the incredible Judith Butler. Butler wrote many books which have deeply influenced me, including a text about grief and politics. It’s called Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Violence, and it’s about how some of us with lots of resources and privileges make certain lives on this planet ungrievable in our imaginations.

By ungrievable I mean we choose not to see and be transformed by the suffering of others—people positioned on this planet with less access to food, freedom, and safety.

Especially post 9-11, as the U.S. struggles with its fears of security, we all have had this tremendous opportunity to recognize our interdependence and shared vulnerability with everyone else on this miraculous, twirling planet. That recognition of shared humanity could lead to creative and compassionate problem solving.

But, tragically, by and large we choose to compulsively retell our delusional story of “American exceptionalism” and continue to try to rely on our military, our bombings, our “shock and awe” campaigns, in an effort to restore that elusive feeling of safety. But wars will never make us safer. Killing other people’s children, husbands, wives, partners, sisters, brothers…these actions do not make the U.S. safer.

What will make us safer is caring about the flourishing of other people’s children as much as we would care about our own.

I did something else I should not have done in New York. I happened to walk by a store called Little Marc Jacobs that carried designer clothes for infants. I really, really shouldn’t have walked inside. I knew if I did my anger would rise through the roof. But, I stepped in anyways just to confirm my worst fears.  Yep, baby shirts selling for $148 dollars.

And I remembered reading somewhere that some children go blind for lack of vitamins that would amount to $10.

You see, people, that some children are born into the world awaiting $148 shirts, and other children barely survive with adequate food, shelter, and health care….this reality is connected to systems of violence.

Holding that $148 velvet shirt in my hands, I wanted to know whether the workers of these products were getting paid fair wages, so that they could provide what they needed for their own children. I wanted to know if the workers in the factories might actually be children? I am not sure, as I have not researched this particular company. But, given the reality of the global textile industry, there is always reason to be concerned.

Somehow, Judith Butler’s book on grieving has something to do with that Little Marc Jacobs store. I have so many things in my own life that I really can only sustain use of by my refusal to grieve the suffering of others. This computer on which I type this post has been produced in a factory with horrible human rights abuses. If you eat tomatoes in the wintertime, chances are they have been picked by someone in near enslaved or straight-up enslaved conditions. And our cell phones? The minerals in them support war in the Congo. And I haven’t even gotten to our gas, our national addiction to gorging on gasoline.

My point is that somehow those of us with a lot more resources than our fair share can only go on living the status quo because we have pushed from our consciousness the suffering of other people’s lives—people in China, Florida, the Congo, etc. who are deeply affected by our willingness to go along with what is “normative.”

And yet…that corporations steal and kill and destroy…and then sell their products to us…is not in anyway a natural state of affairs. These profound injustices have been strategically produced by greed and theft. And I believe these injustices could be changed—within two generations even—if consumers took a stand, questioned more, united more.

I don’t have the answers. I rely on my computer and my cell phone everyday. I eat food that is not fairly traded. I likely wear clothes with buttons sewn on by 8-year-old children. While the suffering produced by my life’s participation in what is “only” normative is in some way worlds away, the sweat and tears of that suffering is also as close to me as my own skin and cells. I mean, the tomatoes become me, in a sense.*

I take into my body the suffering of others, and swallow obliviously.

So, although I don’t know how to change a problem that is this enormous, I do know that these huge macro level systems of economics won’t change until we learn how to grieve. For if we grieved, we might be transformed. We might see our shared humanity. We might collectively demand change. Something would happen far larger than one person’s boycott of Florida tomatoes or Mac products (acts in themselves that may not be effective, even if well intentioned).

I believe in synergy. I believe that if you step into the things you feel most called to do—whether it being a writer who exposes injustice, or organizing in your own city to make sure everyone gets a holiday meal, or showing up everyday (as my dear sister does) to work with low-income kids in an after school program—well, all those things added up will create synergy.

But, we must be faithful to the small things. I feel as though I am surrounded by people who are faithful to the small things, and thus I feel hopeful. I am hopeful that we can offer our small loaves and fishes, and a Love  and Creativity much larger than us will co-participate in our collective efforts. There are tipping points, you know. We haven’t reached them yet…we aren’t even close. But that doesn’t mean a tipping point does not exist if enough people envisioned and worked for change from the local level to the global.

You see a certain percentage of people had to first envision the end of apartheid…or envision  women being able to participate in education…or envision rape counseling centers for survivors to go to…or envision curriculums at school that teach children about how to report homophobic bullying.

We have to hear music that isn’t yet playing. Sense loveliness that isn’t yet born. See realities that are awaiting our collective efforts. Taste justice that hasn’t yet touched earth.

Grieve…envision…create. These are the tools. Not our bombs, not our political myth-making of being better than everyone else.

Thank you, Judith Butler, for your courage to remind us of these things.

*Thank you to Kai Hoffman-Krull, a farmer, poet, and extraordinary human being who gave me this insight about the tomatoes that I eat.

(Please note: If you choose to pick up Judith Butler’s books, be prepared for some super tough reading. Her audience is largely academics having enormously complicated, yet really, really important conversations. But, Precarious Life is one of her more accessible texts.)