By Mimi Riexplorer | Midwest Mimi

I woke up at four in the morning, aching from having been too still while I slept.

Arthritis made my first movements slow and painful as I got up to use the bathroom. A few minutes later, I climbed back into bed. My head hurt, my stomach hurt, and my entire body ached. I knew falling back asleep wasn’t going to be easy, so I picked up my phone.

I checked my social media accounts and eventually started scrolling through short videos.

Someone was praising President Trump and supporting Republicans. Someone else insisted he needed to be removed immediately and blamed him for everything wrong with the country. There were opinions about wars, arguments over politics, and people talking about how expensive groceries had become.

One video after another. One problem after another. Everyone had something to say.

Eventually, I closed social media and opened my Google homepage.

Another shooting in Rock Island.

I immediately remembered the gunfire near our home in September, when I watched children outside abandon their bicycles and drop to the ground. There had been so many reports of shootings lately, often uncomfortably close to where we’re raising our family.

And I was exhausted.

Not just physically, although my body had already made that part abundantly clear. I was exhausted by how much suffering there is in the world. How constantly we’re exposed to it. How difficult it can be to maintain hope when every day brings another reminder of everything that’s wrong.

The whole world is in our pockets now.

We can witness wars, violence, poverty, and political turmoil from our beds at four in the morning. We can watch people suffer thousands of miles away and feel powerless to help them. We can spend hours absorbing it all without making anything better.

And tomorrow we’ll do it again.

I don’t want to stop paying attention. I believe being informed matters. But I’ve started wondering whether we’ve confused constant exposure to suffering with doing something about it.

And what happens to hope when suffering becomes something we consume continuously?

Recently, I listened to an episode of Monte Mader’s Flipping Tables podcast called The Joy of Resistance. She discussed moments throughout history when people facing extraordinary hardship found ways to create music, art, celebration, and community.

One example was the rent parties of Harlem during the 1920s. Black families facing discrimination and exploitative housing costs invited people into their homes for music, dancing, and food. Guests contributed money to help their hosts pay the rent.

Imagine struggling to keep a roof over your head and responding by gathering your neighbors around a piano.

The rent still needed paying. The discrimination was still there. But people found a way to help one another survive while celebrating being alive.

The money collected helped keep families housed, and the music and dancing brought neighbors together.

Joy wasn’t replacing action. Joy was part of the action.

In Estonia, hundreds of thousands of people gathered to sing patriotic songs as part of the movement for independence from Soviet rule in the late 1980s. Music helped preserve their cultural identity and brought people together in a common cause.

They used their voices, quite literally, to resist.

What fascinated me wasn’t simply that people could experience joy during terrible circumstances. It was what that joy allowed them to create, accomplish, and preserve.

Throughout history, human beings have endured wars, persecution, poverty, displacement, and unimaginable loss. Not everyone survived. Not every story was preserved.

But suffering isn’t the only thing that survives in the historical record.

We can still experience music created by people who lived centuries before us. We can read the words they wrote, admire the art they made, and carry forward traditions they began. Families pass stories from one generation to another, preserving memories of people their children and grandchildren may never have met.

We have evidence of their suffering, certainly. But we also have evidence of their joy.

And here we are, generations later, still experiencing some of the beauty they left behind.

It reminded me that the terrible things happening around us aren’t the entirety of the human experience. They never have been.

And as my own morning continued, I found myself thinking about what that meant for me.

Eventually, I took some Tylenol, got out of bed, and got ready for the day. My son had homeschooling to do, and I had things I wanted to accomplish.

So I sat down at my desk with my iPad and started drawing a coloring page while I supervised his schoolwork.

I was creating something for Midwest Mimi, a piece of artwork I could eventually offer as a digital product for someone else to enjoy. I liked the thought that someday another person might sit down with that same drawing, add their own colors, and make something of their own.

There was nothing extraordinary about the morning. My son had his lessons, I had my drawing, and we had an ordinary day ahead of us.

Nothing about the world had changed. The shootings hadn’t stopped. People were still suffering. My arthritis hadn’t suddenly disappeared just because I’d decided to get up.

But there I was, making something that hadn’t existed when I woke up.

I hadn’t forgotten about the suffering I’d seen. I was simply refusing to give it the entire day.

Making something doesn’t always mean sitting at my desk. Sometimes I write from bed, using the same phone that brings me all those terrible headlines.

The device that allows the world’s suffering to reach me at four in the morning also allows me to put something meaningful back into the world.

I love turning an idea into something real, whether that’s a piece of artwork or an essay that makes someone think, question, remember, or feel.

Especially feel.

When someone reads one of my essays and recognizes something of themselves in it, an experience that began with me becomes something we share. A little connection forms between two people who might otherwise never have known one another.

That’s how community begins.

Creating isn’t something I do because life is easy. Our family navigates disability, mental health struggles, financial limitations, and all the responsibilities of raising and homeschooling three children. Some days there isn’t much energy left after doing everything that needs to be done.

But I still create.

I can’t control what everyone else creates or shares. But I can decide what I contribute.

And I want to contribute something worth experiencing.

My artwork won’t end a war. My essays won’t prevent another shooting or make groceries affordable. Joy isn’t a replacement for action, although sometimes it can be part of it. And I don’t believe people should be expected to find happiness in every terrible circumstance.

Sometimes life is simply hard. Sometimes grief, anger, and exhaustion are appropriate.

But I also don’t believe we need to remain miserable to prove that we care.

I’ve written before about how I can’t wait until I’m better to start living. Chronic illness has taught me that there may never be a magical day when everything is finally okay.

I’m beginning to realize that the same is true of the world.

I cannot wait until every war ends, every injustice is corrected, and every financial worry disappears before I allow myself to enjoy being alive.

And neither can my children.

I think about those children I watched drop to the ground beside their bicycles in September. I think about how quickly an ordinary childhood moment can become something frightening, and how little control we sometimes have over the things children experience.

I cannot promise my own children a world without suffering or fear. But I don’t want fear to be all they remember about growing up, either.

Their childhoods are happening right now. They deserve to experience laughter, curiosity, creativity, and adventure, even in a world that sometimes frightens me.

I want them to recognize injustice and care enough to challenge it. But I also want them to recognize beauty and care enough to preserve it.

Because resistance isn’t always about what we’re fighting against. Sometimes it’s about what we’re determined to keep.

Our art. Our music. Our traditions. Our relationships. Our ability to find joy and share it with someone else.

That’s the kind of rebellion I want to encourage.

Not another obligation to be positive. Not an expectation that everyone should smile through suffering. Just the deliberate decision to claim whatever joy is available to us, even when our circumstances are difficult.

Make something. Share something. Gather people together. Celebrate an ordinary day. Find a way to add something good to the world, even if that good seems impossibly small compared to everything that’s wrong.

And invite somebody else into it.

I cannot stop everything bad happening in the world. But I can refuse to let it take everything good out of mine.

The bad doesn’t get everything.

Not without a fight.