Category Archives: politics

Count Higher Than Two

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NaBloPoMo 2020 — Today’s Lesson

I’m starting to hear echoes of 2016, when a friend posted, “Well, now we know where the dumb people live.”  To some, if you voted this year to re-elect the president you are wholly and irrevocably:  stupid, ignorant, racist, misogynist, monstrous, evil—and more.  You are judged and defined solely by this one action.  Nothing else need be known about you; you are garbage. 

It’s us vs. them, good vs. evil, either/or, with us or against us.

This profound yet effortless oversimplification, this refusal to acknowledge, let alone explore, the inherent complexity of any given individual, poisons us all too easily.  It is the venomous root of polarization.  David Blankenhorn, co-founder of Braver Angels, describes it so well in his 2016 essay, “The Seven Habits of Highly Depolarizing People”.  He asserts that “binary thinking—the tendency to divide everything into two mutually antagonistic categories”—is the most dangerous habit of polarization.

It’s to the point where I myself feel unsafe to raise any nonconforming perspective among liberals, lest I’m attacked for upholding the toxic patriarchy I profess to oppose. How ironic that the movement of tolerance and inclusion, that claims acceptance and diversity as core values, not only cannot tolerate but violently rejects even benign and earnest internal dissent.

Can we see our political opponents as more than a malevolent monolith?  Can we allow for complex experiences we don’t understand?  Can we withhold judgment long enough to recognize and honor our shared humanity, before we respectfully condemn each other’s wrong-headed ideas?

Can we ‘count higher than two’ in our attitudes and interactions?  Our mutual survival may depend on it, and I know so few people willing to try.

Our voting choice was binary.  Our thoughts, emotions, speech, actions, and relationships should not be.

Moving Through Distress

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NaBloPoMo 2020 – Today’s Lesson

Sometimes the storm you’ve seen coming all along still sneaks up on you. 

COVID essentially obliterated 2020.  My colleagues and I saw the signs in the spring.  We knew all summer that things would get worse again when folks started gathering indoors.  But I did not anticipate a surge until after Thanksgiving.  Wow.  I stand a little agape, but I shouldn’t.

Four years ago I knew it could go either way… in my rational brain.  But my limbic brain would not believe it.  So I was despondent.  I’ve done so much work since then, channeling rage and outrage into nascent activism.  I have hewn closer to my core values, strived hard to be my best self, walking the talk, as if that would make any outcome tonight easier to take.  All year we have known it would be a toss-up again.  And here I am, suffering something akin to PTSD.

My usual workouts and mind-body practices would not cut it.  This day I needed rhythm, music, and another kind of movement.  Some folks at work joined me on a video dance-along to the Kongos—thank you Kathy Varol!  I listened to my Spotify playlist instead of books or podcasts, and walked in time.  Daughter and I played piano for the first time in months—Pachelbel’s Canon and Clementi’s famous Sonatina.  Nice to know that muscle memory can persist 30+ years.

All of my coping skills are called forth now and for the foreseeable future.  At least I’m better today at hearing how my soul asks to be soothed.  That’s a win.

What We Need

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NaBloPoMo 2020 — Today’s Lesson

It’s Election Day Eve.  Big day tomorrow.  What do you need? 

A few of us asked each other this question today.  I need to stay connected to my tribe and get good sleep.  Another needs to form a tribe, learn to reach out and connect on her own terms.  Others need safety.  Crystal ball, genie, group hug (but COVID GRRRRR), a certain election outcome…  I suggested maybe we need an hourly, one song, Zoom dance-along throughout the day.  The playlist is growing.

After multiple queries it becomes clear, as it always does, that more than anything, we need each other.  My Facebook friend, a Trump supporter, told me how a colleague came to work crying the day after in 2016.  He hugged her.  No matter what I think of his politics I need for him and me to stay friends, to commit to not abandoning each other as fellow humans and fellow Americans.  I’m not sure if that’s what he needs… I should ask.

We all need, once again as always, to feel seen, heard, understood, accepted, and loved.  And we need to help others feel it, too.  This does not mean we are not held responsible for our words and actions, and the harm we cause with both.  Compassion and empathy are not exclusive of accountability and reform. 

We need vulnerability and courage.  We need to come alongside rather than come at.  We need to monitor and manage our own assumptions, to hold a mirror to ourselves and own our contributions to current state.  We need calm, discipline, breath, and self-control.

We need to heal.

We need grace—to give and to receive.