We Keep Building

Carrying the Weight of a World in Crisis, One Brick at a Time

Photo by Jakayla James

The shower head sputtered at first, then gave in, drumming hot water down over my shoulders and spine. I stood there, watching the tiles blur beneath the steam, the way they caught the light—a fractured, hollow gleam like the quiet flickers left in a darkened room. My hands stayed braced against the wall, head bowed, letting the heat do what it could. But the weight didn’t lift; it sat dense in my chest, seeping into my bones.

Election night hovered on the horizon of my mind like a storm front, every newscaster’s voice circling around my head, each headline feeding into the next. Then there was Gaza—I tried not to think about it for just a few minutes, but there it was, pressing in, images of lives snapped and crumbled, people running through dust that clung to the soul. Followed by the story I’d read earlier that evening about a woman in Sudan who died by suicide, because she saw it as a better ending than being sexually assaulted to death. And before I knew it, all the burdens that lay across my personal life were also there with me in the shower.

The world was a knot.

My hope was that the water might scrub some of it away, wash my body light and clear like a shell after the tide, but instead, everything pooled in the back of my mind, refusing to dissolve. I'd lost track of how long I felt this kind of gnawing mix of anxiety and anguish—and I know I’m not alone; I’m sure countless of others are feeling it too, right now, as they read this, like a sigh caught halfway out. Maybe you’ve felt it—this unending sense of dread. Which is why I want to share something with you that came to me that night in the shower.

As I stood there, letting the steam thicken around me, I barely noticed the faint sound that had been trailing in the background—music, the low murmur of a playlist I’d started without much thought. It had been mostly a muted companion to the heat, filling in spaces where my mind spun its wheels. Then, through the fog, a song came on, a familiar melody, and something in me paused.

“For The Good Times” by Al Green.

My breath caught as if the water had gone cold, and suddenly, I was back in my grandmother’s living room, where that song seemed to drift through her small apartment in the projects on a regular basis. Al Green was her man, her voice in the world—her favorite artist, her melody when she wanted her thoughts quieted. She used to hum along, moving slowly from room to room, a woman in rhythm with a life she had carved out through sheer will.

It has been 18 years since she passed of breast cancer, the space she left behind is usually a quiet ever-present ache. But hearing that song, her favorite song, I could feel her, like she’d never left. I remembered the soft, steady sound of her voice, the way she’d tap her fingers against her arm when she really felt the music, closing her eyes as though she could pull it closer.

Suddenly, a memory surged up, unbidden but vivid, like a wave that knows when to break. I remembered one of the last things she said to me as she lay in hospice, in that stark room, stripped of all comforts except for the thin warmth of a wool blanket and the calming hum of the monitors. She held my hand with what strength she could muster, a delicate grip that felt somehow like steel. “Make sure you keep building,” she whispered, her voice soft, worn, and sure. Then she smiled—this quiet, knowing smile—and in the silence that followed, we sat together, tethered by the weight of that moment.

My grandmother had said this to me countless times, her voice like a current beneath the surface of all my years. Keep building. Her words were a blueprint, a ritual she repeated to remind me, to root me to something beyond her own life, to something lasting. It was her way of keeping me anchored yet free, her way of telling me that even though I was bound to certain struggles, I was also bound to the possibility of more, of something that might let me breathe easier, stand taller.

When facing white supremacy. Keep building. When facing poverty. Keep building. When facing health issues. Keep building. When facing any of the pitfalls the world has to offer. Keep building.

She had wanted for her grandson what she could never reach herself, and I had known that since I was a child—that her words weren’t just instructions, they were legacy, pressed into me like fingerprints in soft clay. She built a family, a home, a chance, despite segregation, despite her grandfather being lynched, despite the misogynoir.

Despite it all she even helped build me.

And as I stood in that shower, letting her words settle deeper into me, I thought about what it means to build. Not just in the simple act of putting one stone on top of another, but in the way we stack hope upon hurt, love upon loss, and resilience upon every wound that tries to bring us down. I thought of all the things I’ve tried to build—a life that means something, a path that might light a way for others on the margins. Yet, even as I build, I know it never feels like enough. How could it, when there are genocides staining the earth, when Black children’s futures are cut short before they’ve even had a chance to dream, when the wealth and education gaps grow like chasms between mountains?

As I thought more about what and why my grandmother built, I understood, maybe for the first time, that building is more than an act—it’s a necessity.

You see, the forces working against us, they’re always building too. Which is why our anxiety, our anger, our grief, our rage, our sorrow, our depression, it’s all deserved. In fact, most of it comes from a righteous place. But we must understand that this is how the universe has always worked; the tug-of-war of creation and destruction, each pushing against the other in an unyielding rhythm. There's no infinite good. Good has to be renewed, again and again, in every generation. Because the structures that would undo us, the forces that thrive on ignorance, violence, division—they are relentless in their building.

So, our focus must stay sharp on the architecture of things we see moving the world towards progress.

This doesn’t mean we’re not entitled to our feelings about it all, our fears and hopes and despairs bound up in something as far-reaching as a presidential election. It doesn’t mean we don’t have a right to the sharp pangs of worry that creep in at night when we think about who will sit in that Oval Office—whether it’s Donald Trump with his particular brand of power wielding or Kamala Harris with hers. But maybe there’s some solace in understanding that either way, we still have to build. Our work doesn’t pause for politics, doesn’t sway or fold to the rhythm of one election cycle or another. Instead, our call to build stands resolute, even as we adapt to who holds the power.

Of course, what we build, how we build, and where we lay down the foundation will shift depending on who commands the country. We are not naive to that. But either way, the soil of this country remains stubborn and blood soaked. The horrors and hardships of our time don’t dissipate with a simple change in office; they are entrenched, flowing through the arteries of this land.

So we already know that regardless of the outcome, the work continues. This is our inheritance—this necessity to build. The beauty of it all is knowing we’re not alone in this labor. Even in the isolation, the darkness, the quiet spaces where our doubts threaten to overtake us, there are others—silent and strong, hands outstretched to lift stones, willing to meet us at the foundation. We are scattered across towns, cities, social media, and Substack lists, some of us nameless to one another, yet bound together by this shared charge, by the understanding that we’re working to shape something greater than any one victory or defeat.

We build because the world requires it of us, because it’s how we honor those who dreamed before us and those who will come after. We build because we know, in some deep, quiet place, that every stone we lift, every word we write, every act of kindness, is not just for ourselves but for the stranger beside us, for the ancestor behind us, for the child ahead. And in that labor, as solitary as it might feel, we are never truly alone.

So feel whatever you might be feeling today, or in the days following the elector results. Then, together, in this quiet storm of our lives, let us lay our foundations, finding strength in the bonds we cannot see, finding courage in the echoes of those who have already paved the way. Let the water wash over us, let the world throw what it will, for we have inherited this work from those who endured. And like my grandmother’s voice, may we leave a voice that carries on, an unbroken, undeterred testament to those who will come after, so that they too may stand tall against the tides and continue to build.

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Here’s a handful of songs that always lead me somewhere nearer to calm:

Why Was I Born - John Coltrane, Kenny Burrell

It Never Entered My Mind - Miles Davis Quartet

Deacon Blues - Steely Dan

More Than This - Norah Jones and Charlie Hunter

Everybody Loves The Sunshine - Roy Ayers Ubiquity

No Love Dying - Gregory Porter

Fall In - Esperanza Spalding

Ballad of the Dying Man - Father John Misty

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