The Personal is Political

My 2024 manifesto on self-discovery, purpose, and what to do next

‘Splendid Day’ by Megan Gabrielle Harris

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston wrote “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” For the last few years, I’ve been in a state of inquiry. My questions spanned from the personal: Who should I be? What should I do? And with whom? To the borderline existential: What are we doing here? What should we do with our time? And how are we going to see this through?

In many ways, 2023 felt like an answer.

Who should I be? Exactly who you are.

What should I do? You already know the answer.

With whom? The best you can find.

Despite my love of control and precision, I found out that most answers to life’s important questions don’t feel that good to hear. Asking means there’s possibility, wonder, and no closed paths. Answers (the real ones at least) are rigid and unflinching. They don’t care much about your preferences. And once you know them, you can’t un-know. You can pretend and experiment and tell people about your master plans, but ultimately, there’s not enough resistance in the world to silence what you know deep down to be true. And the urgency of these answers isn’t just spurred on by my age or experiences, but instead feels connected to a deep rupture under the surface of everything we’ve been witnessing as a society.

2023 wasn’t the only year I’ve sensed this collective questioning. In 2016, people got on TV and told us the world was ending because Donald Trump was elected. It didn’t (as tends to happen) but it certainly felt a bit worse. Think pieces and dinner tables across the country asked “When will things go back to normal?” In 2020, we were collectively evacuated from our daily lives and communities, facing unprecedented tragedy, illness, and loss. We asked our political and social systems how far they would go to protect us, and the answers were disappointing. Months turned into years of seeing our governing systems fail to answer the call to protect people over profit. We even questioned (and for many are still questioning) the will of those around us to keep us healthy and safe. And in 2023, we’re here again. Seeing millions of people being bombed, displaced, and starved in a land that’s been ripped from beneath their feet. And this time the institutions around us are telling us that we are not even allowed to question, to name, or to grieve.

Instead, we must trust the same recycled answers we’ve always been given: All of this is for the greater good, a reality you couldn’t possibly understand and have not been invited to create. Look away and continue on.

But the cycles between these massive ruptures feel shorter and shorter. For many people in relatively privileged conditions, the impacts feel closer and closer to home. It creeps into your job, relationships, and daily habits, to expose what was always there. A knowing that things have never been quite right. A knowing that the person or the place never quite fit. A knowing that our actions and habits don’t align with or reflect the breadth and depth of our values. There is a sneaking suspicion that something else is out there, waiting for us to grab it: Better lives and better worlds just out of sight.

I’ve known it, for myself and those around me for a long time. But in recent years, it’s never quite clicked what to do with it all. Like I’m sure many of us have asked, in whispers and shouts in our lives, what do we do once we know?

How do we create the world we want to see and embody it in a way that invigorates us, invites others in, and keeps us wanting to know more? This year, I’m determined to live up to what I find.

In 2024, these are my guiding questions:

1. How do I find the space to hold hard/real/true things about myself and the world?

2. What are my outlets to share and engage with what I find?

3. How do I sustain it despite everything telling me to look away?

I want to bring more of that pursuit into the work on As You Are, engaging with you over the questions we should be turning our attention to, and exposing you to people and projects who are searching for answers about ourselves and the world around us. Frankly, imagining a new world is the most creative thing we could do.

Looking forward to more exploration in 2024. Free Palestine, Sudan, the Congo, and every corner of this earth. 🍉

Toni Morrison

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