Falling into despair
and how I pull myself out of it.
Sometimes, I find it so easy to fall into despair.
The reasons for anguish surround me, pummel me with fists of fire and stone. The stabbing of a young girl in a suburb of London, the ongoing, invisiblised genocide in Darfur, the lack of progress on diversity in publishing... whether in life, death or art, there are genuine reasons for despondence.
But then, why do we continue what we do? Why do we keep making art, or fighting the good fight, or even try? When quitting, capitulating, accepting, would be so much easier, why do we go on?
I came to thinking about this over the weekend, as I attended the Cheltenham Literature Festival, chairing a panel with the lovely Natalie and Naomi Evans of Everyday Racism. Attending these events, of which Cheltenham is a particularly posh manifestation, never fails to disappoint. I always feel like an explorer, traveling into the wildernesses, embarking on an anthropological adventure. I mean, are you a book festival goer? It’s not quite the typical Sudanese diaspora weekend out. I didn’t even know literary festivals existed, until I was invited to speak at one! Now, I’m a huge evangelist for the concept, so much so I recently joined the Edinburgh International Book Festival Trustee Board.
As I said to the selection panel, I love book festivals because they’re like music festivals for nerds. We discuss ideas: it’s all politics and philosophy and art and culture and the meaning of life and how to be a better human and how to write the perfect sentence and the glorious magic of a line break. I’ve made some of my best friends at literary festivals, I’ve also made some of my most famous nemeses. It’s all very high drama, even if the stakes are embarrassingly low.
But with ideas, I suppose the stakes are sky high. They certainly feel so, right now.
More than ever, I feel like we are living in a time where consensus is up for grabs. Whether on gender, sexuality, migration, climate change, healthcare - we live in an information ecosystem of wedge issues, of ‘if you’re not with us, you’re against us’ mentalities, and for all the mainstreaming of prison abolition a few years ago, the environment feels punitive, punishing and polarised, permanently.
Sometime this week, I arrived at a realisation with the urgency of a cruise ship groaning into its final port: I can’t see a way out.
Why is my father calling me up and talking about the dangers of ‘woke’? What do we do about UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak canceling one of the biggest infrastructure projects of the century? How do I stop my book getting banned in the United States? Something something AI?
For the first time in my life, I don’t have the answers. But that uncertainty, subhanallah, gives me faith.
These are not complicated problems, or complicated times. We are securely in the realm of the complex, and that requires a whole new approach.
That we live in a time of complexity is not a new idea. A piece from 2011 by Gokce Sargut and Rita Gunther McGrath described the difference between complex and complicated as such:
Complicated systems have many moving parts, but they operate in patterned ways. The electrical grid that powers the light is complicated: There are many possible interactions within it, but they usually follow a pattern. It’s possible to make accurate predictions about how a complicated system will behave.
Complex systems, by contrast, are imbued with features that may operate in patterned ways but whose interactions are continually changing.
They make a key observation about the difficulty of holding complex problems in our mind.
“It is very difficult, if not impossible, for an individual decision maker to see an entire complex system. This is essentially a vantage point problem: It’s hard to observe and comprehend a highly diverse array of relationships from any one location.”
Another writer in this space, Jeffrey O’Brien, also talked about the challenge of our individual, intellectual limitations when it comes to complexity.
“‘Complex’ is a synonym for ‘unpredictable’—or at least not easily predictable.” In complex systems, “interactions are not linear, but emergent.”
“We can’t untangle complex systems in our minds, and we can’t intuit our way to a better-working world.”
I have learned to accept that living through complexity means I cannot imagine outcomes, I cannot intuit my way through our social landscape. This is both a result of the maturity of my understanding and an acceptance of the uncertainty surrounding us.
Solutions will ‘emerge’, but they can only do so if we continue to take steps forward, if the players continue to play. We cannot control the outcome, but we can control what we put into the system. I realised I must learn to divorce myself and my worth from attachment to visible impact and measurable ‘progress’, because I do not know what the impact of my ‘input’ will be. It may never be possible to know, during my lifetime or well after. Indeed, my desire to know might be more ego driven than I might like to admit. So perhaps there is some rahma, some mercy, in not knowing. In stepping into the uncertainty, with no sense of whether my books or my words or my stories will change anything at all, but so long as I keep moving forward, in connection, in solidarity, in community… as long as I keep swimming…
In the words of Natalie and Naomi: Everyday Action, Everyday Change.
Khair, inshallah.
Thank you all so much for reading my weekly newsletters, sending emails and leaving comments. It honestly means the world. My recommendations for you this week are loosely tied to the themes of complexity and change.
Essay: Empowerment vs Power
Sorry, but this one is a shameless plug. You may not know that I published an essay collection last year, TALKING ABOUT A REVOLUTION, and one of my favourite pieces looked at complexity in social movements. You can read it on Lifehacker here, and if you’d like a copy of the book, do order it here!
Lecture: On The Limits of Forgiveness
I found this lecture through The Point in essay form, in case you want to read the piece rather than watch it. The opening asks a profound question, which I continue to grapple with:
How can one be a truly forgiving person without effectively condoning everything every person has ever done?
Loki: Season 2
I’m not a huge Marvel gal, though I do dabble. The first season of Loki was fantastic, and so it is of great excitement to me that Season Two dropped this week! I was fortunate enough to visit the ‘Loki Immersive Experience’ in London and it got me super hype for the clever, high energy, time-bending show. Marvel done well, I’d say. Have any of y’all seen this yet?
Bonus: I’ve been hearing a lot about this BECKHAM documentary on Netflix. I’m not usually into celeb documentaries, but this seems to have something to say about class and football in Britain. Let me know what you think, if you’ve checked it out!
Thank you, as always for reading and supporting my work. Big shout out to this week’s newest paid subscriber: Bx Sassy! As a freelancer of almost a decade, income from this newsletter makes the world of difference, and every little bit counts. If you feel like you have the capacity to support my work, do consider upgrading to a paid subscription.
I leave you with a couple of tiktoks; one a review of a new film THE CREATOR, and the other which just…needs to be watched for the full effect. With the sound on. :) Enjoy!
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Until next time inshallah,
Yassmin
"Sometime this week, I arrived at a realisation with the urgency of a cruise ship groaning into its final port: I can’t see a way out. " oh yassmin - thank you for those words that hit my plexus this morning. I'm lying in the early morning sun - weary, tired, and messy in the mind. I had been ignoring the UK (mostly), and then stupidly listened to some of a speech from a woman at the Tory conference and watched a quiet white man hustled out for saying she was wrong. We of course are contending with the 'R' word here. I've been wondering if you have you been struggling to not say anything on this yes or no matter - or would just rather not? I get why. It's been disheartening certainly. I've been thinking a lot about the term "unconscious bias" and your talk on this. In my opinion, the govt rollout of the referendum has been riddled with unconscious bias in their language which unfortunately has opened the door to open racism. Sigh. As for your points on despair- thank you for this encapsulation. It hit home. Thanks for the review of The Creator, I'm going to try and see it this week.