Truth be told, it’s been hard to get out of bed this winter. More pointedly, it feels hard to find reasons to get out of bed.

Some call that depression, set in motion by trauma and grief. And no doubt there’s much truth in that. Yet I call it trying to live with “the gap between ‘what is’ and ‘what could be’”—a gap that these pandemic years has pried so far apart, it’s now (in winter three) nearly unbridgeable. And without a bridge, any sense of being able to wander forward toward horizons of possibilities gets blocked.

Hence the limited reasons to peek out from under the comforter and see promise in a new day.

That gap, mind you, is always there. And I know that we anarchist types, no matter how beat down we feel, continually have to build our own bridges—again and again. But we can’t do it alone, nor without bridging the generations so that we can come at the project of constructing a new world from multidirectional vantage points of brilliance and inspiration.

So I’m super grateful to @marixfort and her 7- and 10-year-olds for supplying me with some much-needed scaffolding right now.

Marixfort read my new book “Try Anarchism for Life” (@tangledwild) to these two kids, who both loved it, and had lots of questions and comments. Last week, out of the blue, the youngest said, “You know what, mamá, I will raise my kids to be anarchists. Thank you for reading us that book.” Then the two children dreamed up and drew the bridge-building “blueprints” (pictured here), and asked their mamá to share them with me, and their mamá said I could share them with you.

The beauty of anarchism is that even if you (or me) can’t see across the rumble at times, but can only see the ruins, there are always other anarchistic spirits who will hold up a cobbled-together lantern to aid you in noticing (again) the flowers and rainbows in the misty distance, and thus help you go the extra mile. Or in my case, get out of bed.

#BeautyOfOurCircle
#EverydayAnarchism
#AWorldInWhichManyWorldsFit

(photo of #TryAnarchismForLife by @blkstarseed, featuring cover design by @eff_charm with circle art by @landonsheely)