There’s an idea I keep circling back to because I can’t figure out exactly how to express it, but iI think it’s really important, and it’s something like this: politics isn’t the base layer of reality.

What I mean is… I think a lot of us have an unconscious tendency to think of what’s happening in the world of presidencies and governments and nation-states as the most really real layer of things. Sure, perhaps if you’re lucky or privileged enough, you’ll get to scurry away temporarily into other layers – doing your interesting work, hanging out with friends, spending time in nature – but at best that’s just a respite from the Real World.

Why make this assumption, though?

Of course lots of the events that fuel the political storyline are all too concrete and impactful. If ICE agents are threatening your community, to pick the very obvious example, that’s extremely real. But even many miles from that real set of events we often take this step where we sort of psychologically take up residence inside the narrative of “America is falling under authoritarian rule” or “ethnonationalism is taking over Britain” and so on. It becomes the entirety of the air that we breathe.

That’s the move I think you don’t need to make, even as you involve yourself in addressing such phenomena. In fact, I’m pretty confident you’ll address them far more effectively if you don’t make that move. Apart from anything else, taking politics as the base layer of reality concedes far too much to the worst people in positions of power. They’re fueled by the attention, and by other people, supporters and opponents alike, all acting like they’re the ones at the centre of everything. So I feel like step number one needs to be denying them that position inside your own psyche.

It feels very freeing and load-lightening every time I remember this – and not in an avoidant, holding-the-world-at-bay sort of way. It’s like I’m freer right in the midst of all the things I was feeling so burdened by.