This Is How It Happens

On comfort and the slow violence of apathy

Photo by Sapan Patel

During our most recent Poetry as Medicine Writing Circle, we read and discussed the work of Ilya Kaminsky. His poem, “We Lived Happily During the War,” sparked the most conversation—and it hasn’t left me since.

We Lived Happily During the War

And when they bombed other people’s houses, we

protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not

enough. I was
in my bed, around my bed America

was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.

I took a chair outside and watched the sun.

In the sixth month
of a disastrous reign in the house of money

in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,
our great country of money, we (forgive us)

lived happily during the war.

This poem is layered and unsettling. It critiques the comfort and complacency of those untouched by war and exposes the absurdity of happiness amid destruction. Still, it resonates because it’s true: there are always those less affected, always those able to turn their faces toward the sun while others burn.

Although Kaminsky wrote the poem in 2019, it feels timeless. The powerful often remain protected, buffered by wealth, while the rest of us try to make sense of a world unraveling. During our discussion, we talked about how this is, in many ways, a survival instinct: to forge ahead, to normalize, to keep living. Especially when the war—or the injustice—feels far from our doorstep.

We are shocked, at first. Then the shock fades. What once felt unbearable begins to feel expected. There’s a fragile balance between staying informed and spiraling into despair; between bearing witness and protecting our own nervous systems. Even the poem reflects this—its speaker lying in bed, then stepping outside to sit in the sun.

In our circle, someone noted that many therapists encourage this very act. Get outside. Touch grass. Don't let the doom consume you. It’s meant to be grounding. It’s meant to keep us functioning. But I keep wondering: at what cost?

A recent New York Times opinion piece, The Beautiful Danger of Normal Life During an Autocratic Rise, captures this tension. David Leonhardt interviews Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen, who draws chilling parallels between the exhaustion under Putin’s regime and what’s now unfolding in the United States.

Gessen notes:

I think it’s a very human, and in a way very beautiful, desire to normalize, to habituate, to find our footing in any situation, and to keep on living. It’s sort of a great, life-affirming ability that we have, except it has a way of normalizing things that we really shouldn’t live with.

That line hit me hard. Because it’s true—we are wired to adapt. To keep going. But that very instinct is what allows atrocity to become background noise.

Gessen goes on:

I’m afraid it will be like the effect of habitation to war, where there comes a point very quickly where it’s only military analysts who look at how the front line is shifting this way and that way over the course of days or weeks.

I really fear that most people will look at it and, first of all, respond to their subjective feeling that their own lives haven’t changed that much. Or if they have changed, they can still live with it and then stop paying attention.

I see this in myself. I catch how easily my focus narrows: the mortgage, my son’s emotional wellbeing, rising grocery prices, looming layoffs. These are real concerns. They deserve space. And yet, I don’t want to become someone who stops paying attention. Someone who adapts too well.

That haunting line from Kaminsky’s poem repeats in me: “We protested but not enough, we opposed them but not enough.” I rarely feel like I’m doing enough. Maybe you feel that too.

At the end of the interview, Leonhardt asks: Given what you’ve seen in Russia and elsewhere, how do we confront the threat of authoritarianism more effectively? Gessen responds:

We don’t have a lot of successful examples to look at, and that’s very disheartening. It also is a call to invention. We do have a lot of unsuccessful examples to look at, so we can at least ask the Democratic Party not to repeat the mistakes of their colleagues in any number of European and Latin American countries

They go on to make a vital distinction: faith is believing America is exceptional and will self-correct. Hope, on the other hand, requires action. Hope is imaginative. Hope insists on possibility, even when history says otherwise.

This is the fight I feel inside myself—between human nature and human responsibility. I know what it is to become glued to the news, to soak in every horror from Gaza, the DRC, Ukraine, Haiti, the U.S.—the list of human rights violations is unending. I also know what it is to look away. To scroll past. To retreat into my own life.

We often say there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism. That may be true, but if we stop imagining other ways of being, if we give up the fight to care, to pay attention, we become not just consumers, but participants. We accept child labor, resource extraction, war crimes as the cost of modern convenience.

And the same is true for war. Especially the ones our tax dollars fund, often without our informed consent.

I don’t have a neat resolution. Most days, I feel overwhelmed already—by parenting, by work, by the private burdens I carry—and it’s hard to know where activism fits inside a life stretched thin. There are no easy answers, no successful blueprints from other nations to show us how to stop what’s coming. And yet, I don’t want to disappear into comfort. I don’t want to normalize the unthinkable just because it’s become familiar.

The challenge is to live inside the tension: to protect our joy, our children, our nervous systems and still find ways to resist, to stay awake, to care when caring feels futile.

Maybe it starts small: refusing numbness. Naming the unease. Writing the poem. Watching the sun without forgetting what’s burning.

---

If my work resonates, I hope you’ll consider becoming a paid subscriber. It’s a small gesture that sustains this space—and gives you access to our monthly generative writing sessions, where we gather to write, reflect, and return to ourselves. I’d love to have you with us.

If you’re reading this in the app, you’ll need to copy/past this link into your browser to upgrade (that’s still not possible via the app): https://daniellecoffyn.substack.com/subscribe

---

Upcoming Community Events for Paid Subscribers:

Writing our Grief - Wednesday, June 11th at 7 PM CST

Writing our Joy - Wednesday, June 25th at 7 PM CST

Poetry as Medicine Writing Circles:

Sunday, July 20th at 7 PM CST - Danusha Lameris

Thursday, August 21st at 7 PM CST - Pádraig Ó Tuama

Monday, September 22nd at 7 PM CST - Maggie Smith

Sunday, October 26th at 10 AM CST - Danez Smith

Links to all sessions sent via Zoom the day before