Tammy Letherer We’ve all heard the news: A white, young mother—an unarmed U.S. citizen—was shot and killed in Minneapolis by an ICE officer. As the details pile up, each more disturbing than the last, we’re left thinking: This can’t be real. This is like living in some dystopian novel.
But reality is refusing to follow story rules.
As a writer, I spend my days asking certain questions of my cast of characters: Why are they doing what they’re doing? What do they hope to gain? What are their blind spots?
In a narrative, the protagonist goes through a series of challenges, eventually approaching a stage Joseph Campbell described as “the inmost cave.” This is where shit gets real. Inconvenient truths start to pile up. Once in the cave, the character faces the ordeal—the “do-or-die” moment.
This is also called the mirror moment, when, in order to survive, the character must reckon with their greatest misbelief—the idea or experience they’ve clung to that once brought safety but now causes suffering.
Are we there yet, in real life?
Certainly, the plot is thickening. We’re struggling with messy, far-fetched scenes of government corruption so brazen it seems cartoonish, cruelty packaged as policy, and lies told with such frequency they’ve lost all meaning. We’re witnessing characters who seem to have no guiding principle, who act erratically without apparent motivation beyond self-interest, without consistency, without any discernible arc toward growth or redemption.
We’ve lost track of the throughline of this story called “America,” which was supposed to be about upholding democracy and preserving the Constitution.
For years now, Christian apologists have compared Trump to King David, framing him as a flawed instrument God can use—as if sexual assault and fraud are just character flaws God can work through. Never mind that David repented. Never mind that confession and transformation are the whole point of that story. We’re supposed to accept this twisted Biblical logic the way we accept the ridiculous premise of a slasher film—just go with it, don’t ask questions.
In our tale of horror, the villain should have been vanquished long ago. After all, this story began with a classic Chekhov’s gun: the Epstein files, documenting powerful men’s connections to child sex trafficking, should have been the smoking gun that triggered the mirror moment for everyone. In any well-structured story, if you show a weapon in Act One, it must fire by Act Three. But in this badly written narrative, the gun sits on the mantle, loaded, visible to everyone, yet never fires.
As an editor, if current events were a manuscript, I’d have substantial notes:
- The conflict is escalating beyond believability
- Character actions have stopped tracking with their established motivations
- The plot has become so convoluted that readers are losing the thread
- What happened to the internal logic?
We’re hardwired to believe that if we face darkness, there will be a reckoning and light on the other side. But we’re experiencing a kind of cognitive dissonance that’s almost unbearable. In a manuscript, I’d write “cognitive overload” in the margins—too many outrages, too much chaos to process. The story has become unreadable.
Most of us have hit our “all is lost” moment at different times—when Trump mocked a disabled reporter, when he called Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals, when he was found liable for sexual abuse, when he incited an insurrection (this list is too long for one blog). Others apparently haven’t reached their breaking point.
And here’s where we arrive at another mirror moment: the realization that we can’t predict or control this narrative. We can’t make sense of how the story is unfolding because we’re not writing this tragedy. If we were, we could connect the dots and derive meaning. We could craft a transformation scene, show the internal shift, earn the character arc.
So what do we do?
Maybe we need to put aside attempts to make sense of the narrative and, instead, look for one true sentence. One clear line of truth.
Right now, that clear line for me is the line of Buddhist monks walking across America—2,300 miles from Texas to Washington, D.C.—in their Walk for Peace. What’s the story here? Why is this simple act of walking—without manufactured conflict, without escalating stakes—so compelling? Why are so many of us turning to this more than the chaotic events swirling around us?
Because it’s a perfect example of “show, don’t tell.”
The monks have very little to say. But in their actions, they’re creating a space of compassion, peace, kindness, gentleness, and most of all, hope. They are not separate from conflict—we understand that conflict is what made them take to the road—but they are not trying to force a story on anyone. They are simply urging us to look in the mirror and find our own story, our own peace.
This is the power of simplicity versus chaos. While we’re trapped in a convoluted, badly written narrative arc, the monks are inviting us to transform through one perfect line of poetry. One prayer in motion.
We can’t all walk 2,300 miles. But we can pick up our pens. We can sit down at our computers. We can protest in our own way, even silently. We can practice peace through actions, through art, through the simple, clear choices we make every day.
Let’s be like the monks: Let’s prioritize showing over telling. Let’s point to something greater, something that can’t be said but can be felt—a resonance, an invisible truth that lives between the words.
We are each in this story for a reason, with a specific role to play. And in the words of John Lennon: Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.
May you and all beings be well, happy, and at peace.
Until next time,
