🐍The Plan for after You Get Punched in the Face (Part 6)

Gung hay fat choy, m*therf*ckers!

“Gung hay fat choy” is a Lunar New Year greeting in Cantonese. For your entertainment, I’m saying it with the inflection of John McClane (Bruce Willis) hollering, “Yippee-ki-yay, m*therf*cker!” in the 1988 film Die Hard:

So today is Lunar New Year celebration day. We are gonna get to celebrating in a minute but first I gotta take a quick 80s movie diversion cuz once I thought of it, I couldn’t get it out of my head. I think it might help you too.

In the original Die Hard, in case you forgot, John McClane is ducting his way around the Nakatomi Plaza skyscraper, facing off with the exceptional thief Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) and his band of violent a$$hole co-thieves.

In a pivotal scene, McClane is scuttling around a cube farm trying to stay alive while Gruber and his most evil henchman Karl (Alexander Godunov) and some other guy shoot at him. Gruber turns to Karl and says, “Karl, schieß dem Fenster… [long pause as Karl attempts to process human language] … … Shoot the glass!”

[SPOILER ALERT & CONTENT WARNING - ultraviolence, profanity, loud]

Kk so then Karl and Hans start shooting all the glass walls of the cube farm and the broken glass just rains down and down and down and the next time John McClane has to change his position to stay safe, we see this shot of his poor little feet. You’ll recall that his feet are bare because he hates flying and when he got to Los Angeles he followed the advice of a fellow traveler and took off his shoes and walked around making “fists of [his] toes.”

And that’s when the thieves struck the office building and he has to start running around with no time to don shoes.

So Hans Gruber uses this inside knowledge about the state of his feet deliberately to inflict maximum damage and pain:

Look at these poor little tootsies. Photo courtesy 20th Century Fox.

So that brings us to the true topic of today’s post:

Ways to Avoid Despair (6/10)

6. Remember the words of Adam Serwer

Why are you telling us this story today, Auntie Genevieve?

This 10-part series is about the nonstop onslaught of wildly repressive actions from the new administration. We ask ourselves, when faced with all these repeated punches to the face, how might we manage our despair, insist on our joy, and keep moving forward at least a tiny bit each day?

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu talks about the importance of exploiting your enemy’s weaknesses. If your enemy has a large army but their morale is poor, for instance, don’t fight them only on the battlefield, attack them in the psyche to demoralize them even further.

So Hans Gruber observes McClane’s bare feet and the plethora of glass walls and spots an opportunity to exploit that weakness. McClane’s little feet do indeed get ripped up and he has to cope with that pain for the rest of the movie. Things look bad for him over and over again.

But allow me to remind you that [SPOILER ALERT] John McClane wins in the end.

All the way back in 2018, the journalist Adam Serwer started saying something about the version of this exploitation strategy that was unfolding in our national story. The unforgettable line Serwer wrote is, “The cruelty is the point.” I very much recommend his book by the same title (both the first and second editions).

I won’t spell out all the details here. But let’s observe that it doesn’t help very much to be shocked by the “shock and awe” that is raining down on us. We gotta radically accept that lots of glass is getting broken and it’s being done intentionally to hurt us and our tender little feet. They are attacking our compassion and humanity because they see that as a weakness.

And like John McClane, we gotta find a way to move forward anyway.

So that’s my recommendation for managing despair today: recognize that the bad guys are trying to hurt you, and it’s working. But that doesn’t mean they are gonna get away with the bearer bonds.

Today’s Way to Cultivate Joy

So I already mentioned this - it’s the day to celebrate the Lunar New Year.

Around here, we believe that it’s foolhardy to let the opportunity for new hope to pass uncelebrated, no matter how dire the circumstances might feel.

Allow me to welcome you firmly into the Year of the Wood Snake.

Year of the Snake art, produced by one of the artists in my household. Photo courtesy of one of the other artists in my household.

According to Search Lab’s AI at Google, this year we should be looking out for wisdom, protection, transformation, elegance, and mystery.

That sounds great! I could use all those vibes right about now.

Today and in the weeks to come, please find yourself some glimmers of hope, red envelopes, fireworks, fresh fruit, lanterns, and parades. Indulge in the color red. Paint some beautiful snake art. It’s important. Don’t miss the chance to notice and celebrate a new beginning, even when it may feel like everything is ending.

For example, I bought myself this money tree and kept it on my desk all day.

Smiley lady brought her money tree to all her Zoom meetings today. Photo courtesy Zoom AI Companion 2.0.

I feel the same way about my money tree that Pascal felt about prayer - it may actually work, in which case your faith will be infinitely rewarded, or it may not, in which case all you lose is that little bit of time that you spent praying.

So I will act as if this money tree can indeed create a flow of money and good fortune into my household and community. What’s the worst that could happen?

I am sending you my warmest hugs for the New Year, and soft bandages for your messed-up little feet.

Don’t go it alone,

Genevieve