In 2004, I lived in Madison, Wisconsin. It was an animated time in an animated city, where the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had spurred a committed peace movement, some members of which—including me—rallied around John Kerry. He was a former combatant who had turned to the cause of peace; surely, we reasoned, voters across the country would see the wisdom of selecting him over Bush’s jingoistic militarism. They did not, resoundingly.

Although many people I know have been sucked into the vortex of 2016 since Donald Trump’s election victory, I keep getting drawn back to 2004. The elections and the results are familiar, sure. But there’s more to it than resemblance. One of my closest friends was a poet and an activist, and like many writers, he was often hooked by a turn of phrase, a piece of text that spoke with particular eloquence. In 2003 and 2004, it was Frantz Fanon’s reflection from The Wretched of the Earth that “each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it.”

As I texted with friends the day after this year’s election, and mourned and thought and read and deleted Twitter (highly recommended), those words kept ringing in my head and elicited not a small amount of shame. Since September, in my own small way, I worked my butt off for the Harris campaign. I live in New York now, but I’m from Philadelphia, and that city remains central to my identity. I’ve passed that on to my kids, for better or worse, which meant that every available weekend we dug out our Phillies, Eagles, and Sixers shirts and hats (I quit hockey after the Flyers lost to the Devils in 2000), we trundled into the car and down the turnpike and onto the streets of Germantown and Yardley and Nicetown.

I had my reservations, especially about the Biden/Harris administration’s seemingly blanket support for the Israeli war on Gaza (and now on Lebanon). I’m Jewish, but like many Philadelphians of my social position, I went to Quaker school and still hold those values dear. As a Professor of African History, I study South Africa’s struggle against apartheid, which, for all its contemporary flaws, still models alternative paths to resolving seemingly intractable conflicts. I employed trolley problem logic—to support Harris was to sanction the suffering of so many people in the Middle East; not to support Harris was to sanction those people’s suffering, and others’ too. So I gritted my teeth, motivated my kids, and convinced myself that campaigning with Liz Cheney and courting her father’s endorsement was sound political strategy, although he is a war criminal.

But now it is a new week and I do not know anything about sound political strategy. I rue a media diet that didn’t serve me in the end; hopium kills you because it lies. On Wednesday morning, on too little sleep, I gently laid down in bed with my twelve-year-old son to wake him up. He turned to me and asked about what happened in Pennsylvania. And it sucked, truly sucked to answer him. So I told him instead about how proud I was of him, and how I will remember him in his Kelly-green Jalen Hurts jersey, knocking on doors in Nicetown and talking to seniors who called him “little man” and told him that yes, they knew where their polling place was. Yes, they were supporting the Democrats, and surely the Birds would score in the first quarter at some point this season (which they finally did on Sunday). And so I cried a bit, told him this, gave him breakfast, walked him to school, and answered his questions about demographics and vice presidents of unpopular incumbents and whether there was anything Harris, he, or any of us could have done. I lied a bit because I said no, not really, and when I made my way back home my friend’s favorite phrase kept knocking around my head.

Because there was something she could have done, or at least that I think she forgot, and that I forgot too. This election ought to have been about humanity, not big-d democracy, or Trump, or even Harris. It should have been about humanity because since we live in a world where some Jews are Nazis, there is no eternal truth, no absolute good, and no cosmic evil, the only remaining true thing is humanity. Humanity which is here, and which is there, and which is a delicate, precious thing that tax cuts (for some) and frustration (for many), resignation (for others), and apathy (for most) will risk.

I reasoned away my commitment to humanity to support a candidate who campaigned with people probably not convinced that Palestinians are fully human. I messed up. It must be about humanity, which means it is about empathy and understanding, and politics with a little p, and patience. This is what the long South African struggle teaches: how hard it is to keep the light flickering (the Quakerism dies hard) amidst the darkness and how necessary it is because when you lose that light, you risk losing yourself.

I texted with a lot of people in the aftermath. Among them was another friend who teaches at Howard, where Harris had planned to celebrate at her alma mater. I noted that they had been ready to party; he responded quickly that America had instead sent “us a reminder.” I liked how he phrased that because I realized that I wasn’t included in that “us.” It reminded me of what I had learned through decades of being privileged to study the history of the South African struggle, and so many other struggles for real liberation worldwide. Not victory in elections or states, but victories in remaining human in an inhumane world. Tending even a little garden of humanity takes determined and necessary work. I’ve rarely had to do that. Most are not so lucky. Our world is already inhumane; now my big, influential corner of it threatens to become even more so.

So, we need to learn from communities and people who have always quietly and bravely tended their gardens. If you don’t have a garden because the imperative to work or earn or profit doesn’t give you the time to grow one, resist, refuse, and plant one. Because we all need it. Learn from others’ examples. I posted some version of this on my Facebook page Wednesday night, along with many more f-bombs. I noted that it will be my last post there because algorithms are not humanity.

Hopium kills but hope seeds. As we gird ourselves and our children for whatever is to come, there is nothing obscure here. Only a mission to fulfill or to betray, and ultimately, that choice is up to us.