Will you shepherd your attention for four whole months, keeping your eye on the prize?

Will you have genuine conversations with neighbors near and far — perhaps especially the persuadable, or those whose votes count waaaaay more than the rest of us?

Will you advocate for safe, secure, seamless, and universally accessible mail-in balloting — the single best way to fight Covid and social-network no-goodniks? [Seriously: this has to happen, and that means preparing early. Yes, it’s safe to assume that a bunch of people who are ordinarily disenfranchised might in fact vote if you made it easy. But it’s an even better bet that both Covid and the no-goodniks will be in full swing by October/November. Let’s prepare for the worst of both.]

Will you assume the outcome?

Will you approach the outcome as a final referendum on good and evil, or a definitive, unsurvivable rejection of those whose views you would vote out? [If not, how might you communicate that you’re prepared to live and work together — six feet apart and masks on, please — after November?]

Sometime in the fall, I remember putting together a list of concerts I wanted to see. Farthest out but at the top of my wish list was John Prine with Emmylou Harris at Wolf Trap.

There’s nothing like picnicking on the lawn at a national park while watching a favorite act — and tonight was supposed to be that night.

Obviously, it won’t be. But, unlike so many other shows I hoped to see this year, it won’t be rescheduled, either. John died of Covid-related complications on April 7th. I’m not normally a YouTube comments reader, but I remember seeing a comment shortly afterward that summed it up perfectly: “I’ve never been so affected by the death of someone I don’t know.”

I was lucky enough to see John live once, and I’ll treasure that memory forever. And I suppose I’ll always have to wonder what he would have sounded like with Emmylou, who is magical.

Lo and behold, John left us one last song: “I Remember Everything.” It’s no substitute, but at least we have a little something extra to remember him by.

It might not be what you want, or think you want.

There’s discipline and duty (the philosophical versions of the cult of productivity), and then there’s the sort of Daoist urge to go with the flow — to sleep in, to exercise, to follow an interesting thread.

In a wonderful image, I’ve heard some creatives refer to this as breathing in, with the implication that if you’re just breathing out all the time, you’re toast.

You can’t just breathe in all the time, either, but those of us who can always find a way to breathe out can often use a reminder to take a breath, too.

What really needs to happen?

What can you let happen, and where might it take you?

It’s true: what the world doesn’t need is a lot more blather from people accustomed to blathering as they like and as if it mattered.

But if it’s also true that silence equals complicity, then all voices are needed.

The opportunity is to learn to become more mindful in speaking, listening, and gathering:

• Asking who is and isn’t in the room
• Creating openings and providing signal-boost for people who might go unheard
• Thinking before speaking
• Concisely telling what we know, and then stopping
• Listening to understand and (maybe) respond
• Eagerly seeking and accepting honest, generous, relevant feedback
• Humanely providing the same

Imagine going to a conference where everyone had a live microphone all the time.

With many of the traditional gatekeepers gone, the invitation is to help curate your own contributions and the conversation around you.

Question 0 is, Are the people we’re trying to talk with open to talking?

The answer to that question can determine so much else about how to begin and how to proceed. For example, if they are open to talking, are they open to talking with us?

Here are 10 further questions:

1. What do we want to talk about or change?
2. Why? (What’s the real issue here?)
3. Whom are we speaking for?
4. Whom are we speaking to?
5. What is the change we’re trying to make (or would like to see)?
6. Who has power to make that change?
7. What are the interests and issue histories at play?
8. What’s our budget, in time, money, energy, attention, etc.?
9. What are we asking, demanding, or implying the other person budget?
10. What’s the timeline for change and who controls it?

This is a little bit different than beginning with the end in mind. “What does done look like?” is a good question to ask about a bridge across the river, but a much slipperier question to ask about a bridge from here to a better future.

It’s certainly different than demanding Change! Now!

Bureaucracy, complexity, and difficulty are not reasons change cannot or should not be made, but they are real obstacles to making effective change happen.

I just watched Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods this weekend — easily one of the most powerful films I’ve seen in recent memory.

There’s plenty else that could be said about the social commentary, but I want to highlight the Vietnam-era phrase “back to the world” for a moment here. During their time in Vietnam, the main characters frequently talk about what it’ll be like to go “back to the world” and what they’ll do when they get there, and of course only some of those ideas are borne out in reality.

All of which, in the midst of a pandemic, begs the questions: who will we be and what will we do when we’re able to go back to the world, and what sort of world will we be going back to?

Favorite reads this week:

• Yuval Noah Harari, et al: “How COVID-19 Will Change Us,” Noēma Magazine. Three meta-trends jump out to me: first, how each commentator’s view aligns (unsurprisingly) with their background; second, how out of touch U.S. commenters seem; third, how everyone agrees that solutions aren’t coming from government.
• Essays by Chris Nelson of Sylvanaqua Farm. I spent a good morning reading his writing, both learning and unlearning.
• The Bitter Southerner. Food, drink, music — and bitters? Sign me up. And boy, are they bitter, in the best way.

Flipping through my journal the other day, I came across this question: “Whatever you’re doing, will it matter in a year?”

When so much is uncertain and time is slippery (we’re more than three months into Groundhog Day now), it can help to think even farther out. It forces prioritization, and clarifies the priorities: long-term survival, development, and resiliency.

All of those can be practiced, and they will matter in a year.

In a recent interview with the MusiCares foundation, Jason Isbell provides a mindfulness mantra worth sharing.

The mantra, which Isbell attributes to his time in rehab, is “to just keep your head and your ass in the same place.” He goes on: “it’s really about living in the moment, trying to be present, and focusing on the process.”

I don’t know about you, but the longer I find myself forced to stay in nearly the same mental and physical space, the harder it is to actually be there — mentally or physically.

But, of course, the invitation is to be there, in one piece and in one place, one day at a time.

These aren’t the only issues we face right now, but the current crisis has brought these into especially sharp focus:

• We have to live within the limits of our planetary system
• We have to create dignified work and opportunities to contribute
• We have to tear down decades and centuries’ worth of barriers to full participation in civic, cultural, and economic life
• We all have to prepare ourselves and our children to handle ourselves and our responsibilities

It won’t be easy: can we embrace sane ecological limits, for example? Or persuade everyone that a way forward that includes and values many kinds of contributions from many kinds of people is not only possible but positive-sum? Can we create positive-sum inclusive growth even as we sharply reduce environmental harm?

We might lose some of the upside, but the purpose of society is not to make billionaires.

And the downside risks — of people seeing no place for themselves or their talents in the system, of environmental catastrophe, of citizens throwing away freedoms — are growing starker by the day.