I first read, “Naming the Problem” by Harvard political scientist Theda Skocpol last summer, but I keep coming back to it. While it is focused on health care, there are so many lessons and nuances within. For me, it stitches well with the poem “Pushing Through” by Rainer Maria Rilke:
Pushing Through
It’s possible I am pushing through solid rock
in flintlike layers, as the ore lies, alone;
I am such a long way in I see no way through,
and no space: everything is close to my face,
and everything close to my face is stone.
I don’t have much knowledge yet in grief–
so this massive darkness makes me small.
You be the master: make yourself fierce, break in: then your great transforming
will happen to me, and my great grief cry will happen to you.
The connection I find between them is in the struggle to see clearly and to settle with what feels like immovable objects. A big systemic issue, like getting health care for all amidst the political and financial realities, and the heartbeat of any one person stuck in space.
