With millions of thought bubbles having to do with it already crowding the metaphysical airspace out there, I feel there would be no point in adding to the cacophony. Everything has already been said at least a hundred times. Adding my thoughts about the election or what led to it or its aftermath would not actually add much of anything. Clearly I wished for a different outcome - not that the offered alternative would have necessarily been the outcome of my dreams - and I am in mourning for our culture and the lost dreams of an entire swath of our fellow citizens who have felt neglected and sidelined for a generation, and rightly so. Simultaneously I grieve for the people that many members of this swath feel entitled to blame and abuse - people these members would rather hold at arms length or further because they feel threatened by them for any number of social or economic reasons. I am appalled, also, at the now-apparent righteous blindness of the educated, analytical, intellectual class to which I belong by birth and by choice. And I marvel at the ever-expanding wont of Americans to label, box, and package themselves into comfortable, familiar paddocks so that they do not have to look at the "other" as no different from them. If we divide ourselves from each other, we think it will keep us safe. We think we will win. Because, you know, winning is everything.
I wonder if we will learn the lessons we need to learn from this experience - from having our wishes and needs ignored, from having our motives judged, from having our assumptions about the world challenged and squashed, or, worse, affirmed. I wonder if we know what the lessons are. I wonder, whatever each one of us needs to learn, if we will assuage our guilt, or shame, or disappointment, or anger by not thinking we have anything to learn but thinking it's someone else who needs a lesson.
What if what we need to learn is humility? I wonder if it isn't just that simple. We are not always right, we have been wrong, we have looked at the world around us from a place of self-assured privilege. Or victimhood. Or cynicism. Or despair. It doesn't matter. It's all arrogance. If the first thing I do when someone else does anything is judge, then I am arrogant. I think I know better. And I am indignant if anyone does that to me. That is arrogance. To not look inward, to not question my own motives, to assume I am correct in my first reaction - this is arrogance. To point a finger at another before asking what it is in myself that allows me to see another's faults and judge them as such -- arrogance.
And I think that is how we got here. We assumed we were right.
It isn't about victory. Anyone who says those of us who are unhappy are so because we lost is still living in a world of dualities. Good- bad, right-wrong, smart-stupid, left-right. We like to simplify things this way because we can arrive more easily at the one we choose if we don't have many among which to choose. Surely I am correct, because I have always thought so. It's just less threatening.
The truth is that although we "lost," that is not why we are unhappy. We are miserable because we have seen the error of our ways, and it was arrogance. It was assumption. It was thinking that surely Americans are smart and compassionate enough that they would not fall for propaganda; they would not acquiesce to hatred; they would recognize a lie; they would not dismiss ugliness.
About this, we were mistaken. And that is why we grieve. Because we mind that there are among our families and neighbors and countrymen people who soothe their fear with loathing. Who assuage their guilt with blame. Who laugh at -isms and phobiae so that they won't be accused of them (this doesn't work). Who look anywhere but inward so that they can feel safe and decent. These people are so afraid of losing their "rightful" place, or their money, or their status, or their "power" that they become people they might not admit to being. How terrible it must be to live in fear of falling every moment because you have climbed so high. And how dumb some of us feel for not perceiving this soon enough.
I don't advocate beating ourselves up. That would do nothing helpful. But I do advocate a new culture of self-examination. Not toward guilt but toward humility. Find the things we each do that hold ourselves separate from others, and ask ourselves why. Begin a program of building rather than tearing down. Of finding similarities rather than differences. Of celebrating and rejoicing in a difference that someone else holds dear.
Let the duality-lovers revel in their victories. The victories will be hollow long-term. And when they come to those of us who have moved forward in love and compassion and community-building and ask to be let in? We will let them in. Because no one is beyond reproach. In reality, though, because love is love, everyone is.
