Who Are We Meant to Be in Troubled Times?

Finding courage and clarity when our values are put to the test.

In the Twin Cities right now, armed and masked federal agents have been conducting militarized raids, spreading terror throughout communities. Schools have been forced into lockdown. Businesses have closed their doors. Families are afraid to go outside. Children are being separated from parents. People are being stopped, handcuffed and detained for hours based on the color of their skin or the sound of their accent.

And this is not happening in isolation. Across the world, in different forms and in different places, communities are living with violence, displacement and profound uncertainty. The details vary. The suffering does not.

And yet, in Minnesota and far beyond, people have taken to the streets, often at great personal risk, to say: this is not who we are. This is not the world we can tolerate.

Questions about who we want to be and how we show up are being asked in living rooms, at kitchen tables and in cafés across countries and cultures. Like so many, we’re searching for ways to respond with respect, decency and a commitment to human justice rather than be swept up by fear or reactivity.

Here’s what strikes me. None of us has this fully figured out. We’re learning in real time, paying attention and adjusting as we go. And we’re discovering that moments shaped by complexity, emotional charge and moral uncertainty ask more of us than awareness alone. They ask us to choose how we respond.

The choice to pause. Not to disengage.
But to be present with what is emerging with moral courage.

This is where we begin to embody care and concern for the greater good. Where we truly listen to voices that don’t fit neatly into our carefully constructed notions of ourselves and the world. To experiences we haven’t lived. To questions that unsettle what we think we know.

It’s here that this courage takes shape. In our willingness to stay present and remain open. For me, this begins with pausing long enough to notice what’s happening in the body. To feel what’s present rather than override it. To make room for difference. For compassion and kindness.

What does that actually look like?

You might be scrolling through the news about what’s unfolding in Minnesota and notice your chest tighten or your jaw clench. Anxiety builds. A heaviness settles in. That’s your body responding before your mind has fully caught up. The invitation is to notice this without immediately acting.

From that place, something becomes possible. We become people who can hold complexity. Who can feel outrage at injustice, witness harm and still choose how to respond from our values rather than being pulled into the chaos. In this way, moments of social injustice can become turning points. Places where we take action from a grounded place of care and discernment.

This is the practice of equanimity.

My good friend Margaret Cullen offers a rich and nuanced exploration of equanimity in her new book, Quiet Strength: Find Peace, Feel Alive, and Love Boundlessly Through the Power of Equanimity. Drawing on its historical roots, research, interviews and contemporary applications, she illuminates equanimity not as emotional detachment, but as a deeply embodied and ethical capacity we can cultivate.

As Margaret writes, equanimity is “the ability to fully feel the entire range of human experience without getting caught in reactivity that clouds our ability to clearly apprehend what is happening or to discern the most skillful response. It is tender-hearted without sentimentality, vulnerable without weakness, wise without detachment, and humble without diffidence.”

When we allow ourselves to feel deeply, something profound shifts. We reflect. We ask: what does this moment actually call for? Not what fear demands. Not what anger insists upon. But what is truly needed from a place of equanimity.

This matters because the way we show up ripples outward. In how we meet one another. In how we notice and question our assumptions about who belongs and who doesn’t. In our willingness to let another person’s truth exist alongside our own.

In those moments, we cultivate the qualities that strengthen belonging and coexistence.

So this February, in troubled times like these, what if we tried something different?

What if we noticed what we notice and felt what’s present without letting it run the show?

And what if we paused long enough to take a breath and ask: who am I being in this moment and am I acting in a way that nurtures care for our shared humanity?