May 6, 2025
Excerpts from: Letter to a Young Activist During Troubled Times by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D.
“Mis estimados: Do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered.
...You are right in your assessments. The luster and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking. Yet, I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times. Especially do not lose hope.
Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able crafts in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind.
In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. There is a tendency too to fall into being weakened by perseverating on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there.
Understand the paradox: If you study the physics of a waterspout, you will see that the outer vortex whirls far more quickly than the inner one. To calm the storm means to quiet the outer layer, to cause it to swirl much less, to more evenly match the velocity of the inner core.
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.
It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good. What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing.
One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these to be fierce and to show mercy toward others, both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.
There will always be times when you feel discouraged. I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it; I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate.
This comes with much love that you remember who you came from, and why you came to this beautiful, needful Earth.”
Invitation: ‘... shines like gold…”
Dr. Estés is a writer and psychoanalyst; Member Hispanic Journalists; Post-trauma specialist, Columbine High School and community since massacre, 1999-2003; Board member: Author's Guild, New York.
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The relevance and timeliness of today's reflection is welcome, like a cup of water in the midst of a parched desert. "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. One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul," offers Clarissa Pinkola Estes.
At commons table,
sage serves sane sound support, hope.
As stone soup fable.