** Won't you please share the joy of WYFP by recommending?
WYFP is our community's Saturday evening gathering to talk about our problems, empathize with one another, and perhaps share advice. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here. :-)
Dear friends,
WYFP has been a long-running tradition at Daily Kos, starting in December 2003 as the brainchild of theoria. A variety of others have posted under that banner, most recently pastordan of Street Prophets. I started in spring or early summer of 2005, and it has warmed my heart, taught me a lot, and brought me a lot of joy. After much thought though, I've decided to pass the WYFP torch to others.
I have found that I do not have the energy for it that I had in the past, I have been spending much less time online and more absorbed in real life activities, and last week and the week before last my memory failed me and I entirely missed posting it. I'm sure that worked out okay, but I let you all down, and you are so loyal and kind, and this has become a source of worry for me where it had had not been before. So it is up to you all which of you posts WYFP next Saturday night.
What I see when I look at a typical WYFP thread is Daily Kos' beating heart. This is an exercise in being a human being, a meditation on our heartbreaking frailty, and our desire and courage to have compassion for one another. I have thought for a while that if there is one central message in the experience of WYFP, it is that these extremely human sorrows and loving heroisms are more real, and more important, than our political visions. Politics can sometimes be a way to try to escape from the littleness and raggedness and ineffectiveness of our struggles as a parent, child, spouse, or friend by throwing ourselves into grander and more transcendent ones as a citizen, an activist, a spreader of important memes. It's unfortunate that people don't vote, but it's way beyond unfortunate that people don't make their mom, their partner or their child feel loved, or make time to be a friend. These things build people up and give people the strength to hope and try in relation to the broader issues too. Outrage just burns you out and makes you bitter.
It is in listening to and caring about each other's human problems that Daily Kos is a real community and not just an accidental grouping of people who argue with each other and battle Republicans. I hope the WYFP tradition will stay strong to keep that spirit alive!!
Love,
Elizabeth D