Lately I've been thinking about what I'll call a vow of affectional stability.
The monastic vows of stability, old and new, are vows to remain in a specific geographical location, to vow stability is to promise not to wander, to not move around from place to place.
In a vow of affectional stability you're promising to not let your affections wander, to not let your compassion or outrage jump around from issue to issue, from incident to incident.
In my opinion, one of the limitations of social justice in the age of social media is affectional instability, the way our compassion and outrage never remain in place but jump around chasing the viral trends. For any given issue, our affections never remain in place long enough to lead to any lasting program of action or change.
Affectionally, we care about refugees, until we care about something else. We care about mass shootings, until we care about something else. We care about #MeToo, until we care about something else. We care about police shootings, until we care about something else. Our compassion and outrage never remain in place. Our affections wander off.
So I'm wondering if we might consider taking a vow of affectional stability.
We promise to remain affectionally in place, to continue to care about an issue even when social media and cable news have moved on. The world will chase the next viral wave, but we promise to stay put, still caring, still outraged about this particular issue.
Our hearts won't wander off.
Here, I promise, my heart will stay.
