The Quiet Work or The Calm Before the Collapse

The other morning I was standing on my porch, coffee warming my hands, watching the wind sweep across the ridge, making waves in the snow like the ocean. The aroma of the coffee mingled with the crisp air, and for a moment, everything felt simple. No agenda. No big insight. Just the quiet of a day beginning.

I thought about how many mornings I’ve stood in different places over the years. Different homes. Different seasons of my life. Different versions of myself. And how, somehow, I’m still here. Still paying attention. Still caring.

At seventy-five, I don’t feel pulled toward grand visions anymore. I feel pulled toward something smaller. Truer. Toward building a place slowly and with care. Toward creating a small patch of ground where people can rest, where no one has to perform, where kindness isn’t a transaction.

I’ve lived long enough to watch hope get recycled into disappointment more times than I can count. Different presidents. Different slogans. Same underlying machinery. Every few years we’re offered a new tone, a new aesthetic, a new set of promises. We’re told this one is kinder. This one is more competent. This one is on our side. And yet, Indigenous people trying to protect their water are met with militarized police. Migrants are dragged from their homes before sunrise. Corporations keep building. Prisons keep filling. The earth keeps warming. The details change, but the pattern doesn’t.

At Standing Rock, water protectors prayed and sang and stood between bulldozers and sacred land. They were met with dogs, rubber bullets, water cannons in freezing temperatures, and surveillance in the sky. Years later, under a different administration with a very different personality, federal agents stormed sanctuary cities in tactical gear, ripping families apart in the name of “law and order.” One side spoke softly. The other spoke cruelly. But both relied on the same idea: some lives are expendable.

We’re encouraged to argue about tone. About style. About which party feels less offensive. But legality has never been the same thing as morality. Slavery was legal. Indian removal was legal. Japanese internment was legal. Law has always been a favorite costume of violence. I don’t say this because I’ve become cynical. I say it because I’ve become clear. Clear that no party gets to hold my conscience for me. Clear that I don’t want to spend whatever years I have left pretending cruelty is acceptable as long as it’s packaged politely. Clear that I don’t believe harming people makes us safer. Not Indigenous people. Not migrants. Not protesters. Not anyone.

So where does that leave someone like me? Not in despair. Not in constant outrage. Not in performative purity. It leaves me in what I’ve come to think of as the quiet work. The kind of resistance that doesn’t trend. The kind you can do at seventy-five with a tired body and a stubborn heart.

For me, it starts with living in a way that quietly contradicts what the system expects. I move slowly. I build carefully. I treat hospitality as something sacred, not transactional. I try to create small spaces where people aren’t optimized, ranked, or extracted from. Where they can just be human for a while.

I practice ordinary kindness. I learn people’s names. I ask how their bodies are doing. I make soup. I leave the porch light on. It sounds small, but it isn’t. Empires depend on people believing they’re alone. Kindness, practiced consistently, gently proves otherwise.

I try to tell the truth in plain language. I don’t believe in hurting people to solve problems. I care more about water than shareholders. I don’t trust systems that profit from suffering. No hot takes. No branding. Just sentences I can live inside.

I pay attention to where my money rests. Local when possible. Small when possible. Human when possible. I can’t opt out of the entire machine, but I can lean away from its worst instincts. I can choose, again and again, not to feed what feels wrong.

I try to be a steady elder presence. Not a guru. Not an influencer. Just someone who can say, I’ve watched cycles. I’ve buried friends. I’ve seen movements rise and fall. And I’m still choosing to love people anyway. That choice matters more than we’re taught to believe.

I let joy remain political. Good coffee in the morning. Music while I cook. Laughter on a porch. Bread broken with others. Oppressive systems thrive on exhaustion. Unbought joy is a small rebellion.

I don’t believe I’m here to save the world. That fantasy burns people alive. I’m here to tend my corner. My body. My land. My relationships. My words. To refuse to become what this culture trains people to be: disposable, numb, cruel, afraid.

I’m not interested in perfect futures anymore. I’m interested in decent days. Days where no one is hunted. Days where water is protected. Days where people are treated like people. Maybe that doesn’t look like revolution in the movies. But it looks like something older. It looks like continuity. It looks like keeping the human thread unbroken.

And in times like these, that feels radical enough.