Intertwine
Photo by Marino Linic
By Sterling M. Hawkins, MSW, LCSW-C, LICSW
What’s on your mind as we come to the end of another year? I will share with you what I’m thinking about as we bring 2025 to a close. Celebrating life and what is good while acknowledging death and refuting the evil that incites it requires that we find meaning, foster connection, and plan for the future, even when the immediate future remains bleak.
Reflecting on 2025, I’m reminded again of how fragile life is and how much we take for granted, assuming it will remain untouched, permanent, and familiar. We have become more accustomed to certain things and, in the process, more tolerant, more resilient, and more accepting of the things that inevitably change the ways we think and live.
“Intertwine” is how I have come to define the intricate dance we have in the liminal space between good and evil. Not only the changes that impact our bodies (healthy aging vs. disease), but also the contradictory philosophical, social, and political beliefs, we are forced to rethink and hold simultaneously. Psychology refers to this as cognitive dissonance. For this essay, I will refer to this as Intertwine, defined in the Cambridge Dictionary as: to twist or be twisted together, or to be connected and difficult to separate.
Though not exclusive, I believe three public concerns have captured growing sentiment and the attention of advocates for social justice, with the debate over which legislative policies would best serve the country.
Health Care for All:
Despite numerous high-level political commitments to achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC) by 2030, more than half of the world’s population still lacks access to essential health services. One in four people face financial hardship when paying for health care out of their own pockets-often at the expense of basic needs such as food, education, or housing. (Universal Health Coverage Day 2025, n.d.)
We must ask the question: Is health care considered a right or a commodity?
Expanded Expedited Removal:
is a procedure that allows U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials to rapidly deport noncitizens who are said to be undocumented or who have committed misrepresentation or fraud. Under expedited removal processes, certain noncitizens are deported in as little as a single day without an immigration court hearing or other appearance before an Immigration judge. More individuals are being apprehended across the U.S., requiring quick removal if they cannot prove 2 years of residency. Many reside legally in the US under Employment-based (EB), Family-based (FB), and Academic Study (F-1) visas, but are not afforded Due process. The only exception would be those who have entered the country illegally with the intent of seeking asylum. We must ask: What are the ethical and human rights implications of current immigration enforcement on immigrant communities’ mental health and integration?
Gun Control Policy:
The rate of firearm-related deaths in our nation is rising. While mass shooting deaths represent only about 1% of firearm-related deaths in the U.S., mass shootings in general cause outsized collective trauma on society and have a strong negative effect on the public’s perception of safety. The impacts of this violence are felt across entire communities, contributing to generations of trauma and collective grief. (General, 2024)
Although there is no correlation to mass shootings, gun homicides on average disproportionately impact communities of color. Gun violence is the number one killer of African Americans aged 15 to 34. Even though African Americans make up only 13% of the U.S. population, we represent nearly 50% of all gun homicide victims. Concerning US gun policy, we must ask: How should the constitutional right to bear arms be interpreted and balanced against the government’s duty to ensure public safety? (NAACP, 2021)
Embedded in each of these questions are conflicting beliefs and polarizing views that are intertwined, dividing individuals and the country. However, an inability to arrive at a satisfactory resolution should not be a reason to abandon the fight for access, domicile, and safety. Each statement seeks to address specific considerations, and most will agree that they have some merit. Yet I can’t help but experience injustice when I see social policies or the lack thereof that are subversive, dehumanizing, and their result is evil. Why is this?
The late Nobel-winning poet and essayist Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996), in a 1984 commencement address, best summarizes my thoughts:
“No matter how daring or cautious you may choose to be, in the course of your life you are bound to come into direct physical contact with what’s known as Evil. . . No amount of good nature or cunning calculations will prevent this encounter. . . Such is the structure of life that what we regard as Evil is capable of a fairly ubiquitous presence if only because it tends to appear in the guise of good. You never see it crossing your threshold, announcing itself: “Hi, I’m Evil!” That, of course, indicates its secondary nature, but the comfort one may derive from this observation gets dulled by its frequency.” (Brodsky & Brodsky, 2020)
Brodsky concludes, “The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even if you will— eccentricity. That is something that can’t be feigned, faked, imitated; something even a seasoned imposter couldn’t be happy with. Something, in other words, that can’t be shared, like your own skin.” (Brodsky & Brodsky, 2020)
Brodsky and other essayists influenced by him (including people of color, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Hayden, etc.) suggest in their writing that the concepts of equality and inclusion require democracy, something we are being challenged to reconsider. The questions that advocates for social justice must ask are: What constitutes a moral victory? And what would this type of victory look like in our present day?
In 2026, those of us in the helping professions must re-examine what battles we are willing to fight and possibly die for, if current trends continue. We must also accept that some problems are larger than past solutions we proposed to fix them.
As the year ends, we must mourn our losses and celebrate our wins, as well as what good remains in both individuals and their actions—the intertwine. We must do so with the potential for contentment and with a commitment to refocus our efforts, balancing the things we cherish with what we have condemned and judged as equal to death. We must, in every chapter of life, learn from history, not ours alone, but from others. And to carefully twist the strands of dissension and unanimity in ways that preserve what we most want to see and communicate to the world. Our values and how we wish to be remembered by those who knew us. In short, we must continue to endure in what we believe, while educating those who will listen to what seems irreconcilable. We must press forward. We must fight. We must continue the work.
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References:
Brodsky, J., & Brodsky, J. (2020, September 16). A commencement address. The New York Review of Books. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1984/08/16/a-commencement-address/
General, O. O. T. S. (2024). Firearm violence in the U.S.: Death and injury. Firearm Violence: A Public Health Crisis in America - NCBI Bookshelf. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK605168/
NAACP. (2021, July 7). Gun Violence Prevention Issue Brief. https://naacp.org/resources/gun-violence-prevention-issue-brief
Universal Health Coverage Day 2025. (n.d.). https://www.who.int/campaigns/universal-health-coverage-day/2025