If I look back on my adult life…and the scariest of times, they were defining moments of my character. The decision to move to New York, for acting, when my parents wanted me to teach English. The decision to move to New Mexico, for art, when colleagues warned career setback. The decision to leave him, for myself, when others chose compromise… 

Fear, comes at the junction of change, and only those with guts survive. The rest choose to busy themselves, talking about anything, but what they dream of. They make choices based on how comfortable the transition, how familiar the route.

To stand in your fears and move through them, against odds or advice, is to connect to your courage within. To believe in it, only because you’re scared enough to have to. One cannot know fear without knowing courage. You have to meet it, say ‘Hello, there,’ and move on.

I say to my students all the time—don’t let anyone steal your consciousness. Stoke your inner fire, strengthen your inner core, go in and in and in…and you will find a grace you did not know you had. These are strange and challenging times, headed for even more. 

But in the midst of my worries this Santa Fe morning; for our health, and a government rigged on both sides, literally, dying to change—I walk up my W. San Francisco Street at dawn, to a trail of farolitos lit on each side of me. 

For blocks, these paper bag lanterns, usually at Christmas only, light up my walk this March morning…their flames, glowing my path.

I stop to exclaim at the sheer beauty and simplicity of what surely must be a sign, to keep tending the flame. Keep lighting up your insides. Don’t let your worries extinguish your fire. 

We will, like centuries before us, survive these times. We will learn the meaning of food that nourishes, land that secures us, tragedies that bind us.

This is a fight beyond an American presidency, beyond the violence of our modern world of rushing and doing, this is a fight for you. And if you’re interested, there is still magic round our streets. I know you’re scared, because I am too…

We just have to keep walking.