Carry on

Following last Tuesday’s elec­tion many of us are not okay.  The spec­tre of more dark­ness on the hori­zon is daunt­ing. We are afraid, con­fused, angry, and hurt­ing. While we all must cope in our own ways it is not an easy, nor is it a rapid process.  I admit that I spent last Wednesday tak­ing to my prover­bial bed, wring­ing my hands and fan­ta­siz­ing about becom­ing an expat; some­where south, because Canada is too damn cold for me.  But the real­i­ty of want­i­ng to be with my fam­i­ly and friends crept in. 

Despair came and I pon­dered whether my life spent try­ing to make the world a bet­ter place than I found it has been worth it.  Which leaves me with two ques­tions: how do I feel about my fel­low cit­i­zens, and how do we move forward?

We have all seen dark­ness.  We have expe­ri­enced it per­son­al­ly and as a nation.  Some of us as chil­dren watched the war in Vietnam unfold night­ly on the evening news.  We have seen protests, riots, more wars, divi­sions between us by gen­er­a­tion, gen­der, and race.  We have seen peo­ple per­se­cut­ed for being who they are or lov­ing who they love.  We have seen police bru­tal­i­ty toward black cit­i­zens, ⁹⁄₁₁, and a glob­al pan­dem­ic which killed many and changed us all. 

I have more of my life behind me than before me, and I must make choic­es. I chose not to live the rest of my life in anger and bit­ter­ness.  My faith con­tin­ues to teach me to love my neigh­bor, but nobody promised it would be easy.  The hatred and divi­sion which has con­sumed our coun­try has become too big a bur­den for me to bear. We are all tired, and this time the weari­ness has seeped to my very core.  But we must car­ry on.  We can com­mit to look­ing for the good­ness in those around us, to talk less and lis­ten more, and to find joy in sim­ple plea­sures of life.  We can pro­vide safe spaces for our neigh­bors who are afraid, while we con­tin­ue to work for jus­tice and peace. 

We can choose to con­sid­er that the major­i­ty of peo­ple have act­ed out of fear rather than hatred; peo­ple who fear los­ing what they have or not hav­ing what they need, who feel unheard, who are afraid of those who are dif­fer­ent from them, afraid of los­ing their pow­er or their mas­culin­i­ty.  It is far eas­i­er for me to have com­pas­sion for those who are afraid than for those who are angry and filled with hatred. 

Now is the time to extend grace to our fel­low trav­el­ers on this path.  That is not to say that we accept injus­tice.  But we can act with grace and kind­ness, doing our part to make a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion bet­ter.  After all, no one can hear if we are all shout­ing at each other. 

As for me, I choose to car­ry on.