A meal I shared with a Vietnamese-American Buddhist monk provoked some of this thinking. At the end of our meal, we closed our eyes and meditated, focused on our breathing, on the passage of air over our upper lips, on the stillness within ourselves.

I listened to his steady, quiet voice guide me and my breathing. I believe, as he tells me, as my Catholic tradition tells me, that there will be no end to war until each of us calms the conflicts within ourselves. A simple task, to change only ourselves, and yet such a difficult one. I resolve to hold the shell of my self up to my ear every day, to listen to the sound of my own self, before I set out into the unsettled world, as I must.

While our religions instruct us to behave ourselves, I find that my son teaches me, too, even as I teach him. What have I learned from our relationship this year? That we must believe in what is good and right, without demonizing those that we oppose; that we must fight for what we believe in, without recourse to hate or insults; that we must give, in ways great and small, to distant organizations and the people we meet face to face; that we must connect to others who believe as we do, and grow our values and our organizations; that we must write and read what is meaningful, and ignore the morass of public opinion and media-induced emotions.

If we all do this, perhaps we can change our country, even in the face of entrenched power, the oligarchy of billionaires, the fear and hatred of those who feel powerless. It will take years to stop the tax cuts and the environmental assault, and it may take forever to stop our forever wars and to dismantle racism and patriarchy. But we can stop the moral and political degradation. We can say: Me, too, or I support you. We can say: Enough. We can say: What can I do?

I gave money to Mai-Khanh Tran, a California Democrat who might beat the Republican incumbent, Ed Royce, in a House race. I support Pivot, a Vietnamese-American progressive network started by my brother, Dr. Tung Thanh Nguyen, who resigned from a White House commission rather than serve the current administration. I gave money and raised money for the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network and its blog, because I believe that arts and stories matter in changing our minds and therefore our world.

I continue to write and to give talks in parts of the country that are beautiful but alien to me. Even if this costs me time to write, I want to reach out to people who are different than me, as we all must. I want to listen to strangers and I continue to listen to my son, knowing that if I do not listen to him, he will not listen to me.

That is true for all of us. Not everyone will listen, caught up in the noise, but enough might. Those who do not listen will never know what those who listen do: that it is the listening itself that matters, that listening is what connects us to others, and ourselves.