Three Days After:
Like you, my sleep has been rattled. I’ve found myself either lying awake in a wild animal awareness, listening to the dry wind and the scuttling of leaves, or I’ve given up, come downstairs and sat in the darkness sipping milk. Often, so late, I cannot quiet my mind. It piles images upon images of what may come to be.
This is helpful to no one, but self-discipline alone will not ease my apprehension. I need others. So do you.
Isolation is the real mind killer and spirit killer and a creator of passivity and resignation. Alone, our fears multiply. Alone, hopelessness sets in like a chronic disease, a long term, debilitating anguish.
We need to find others who are also riven with grief for the outcome of this election, and, if we’re telling ourselves the truth, for the fracturing of our illusions. I do not know how all that applies to you. I can only tell you that I believed a base level of goodness counted for something in those we chose to lead us. It does not.
I can tell you that I was raised to tell the truth and respect others, reject cruelty and cherish kindness, treasure freedom and despise tyranny. None of those mattered to 73 million Americans when they chose Trump. I do not know what to make of that. I mean exactly that. I do not know how to make sense of it.
Tyranny works to separate people – tribe from tribe, urban from rural, the religious from the secular, race from race, men from women, supporters of Trump from supporters of Harris. I think we have to reject this effort to alienate us one from another, and I think that begins with each of us choosing not to wholly retreat into our private lives.
Please, do not let this approaching storm drive you into a cramped room where only the glow of your screens gives you security. That security is an illusion. There is no place to hide. So please, before anything else, gather with your friends. Find your small community.
I have begun to move forward. I will not despair. I will not be afraid. I know others will help me to resist those frailties. I need to talk to others to help me find a way forward. I cannot do this alone. Yes, I’ll read and read and listen to men and women I respect on podcasts as they too grapple with this catastrophe, but I need to be in rooms with friends and volunteers and watch their faces as they too try to figure this out. We need to laugh together. We need to look into the coming abyss together, and we need to make plans together on how to oppose whatever crawls out of that abyss.
Addendum:
I plan to be a witness to whatever happens over these next four years. Right now, that means paying close attention to the actions of the Trump administration and recording them accurately and my reaction to them as they occur. This is one very small way I can begin to fight back.
