The country has shifted its weight.
The morning will bring celebration in some houses, dread in others. A peculiar kind of relief and vindication versus a bitter sort of disappointment. Finding oneself on the losing side of an argument that has become morbidly larger than politics.
A very good deal of it all has to do with fear.
Fear has a great variety of disguises, some of them quite handsome (me in my 30s). It can look very much like courage when it’s loud (me in my 20s). It can organize itself into principle, dress itself in the language of righteousness, and gather a great many people into the comforting arrangement of agreeing with one another (me ordering pizza for the party).
It makes us suspicious of kindness, impatient with uncertainty, fiercely protective of convictions and ideas we’ve scarcely examined.
It’s patriotic to want to preserve what we love; honorable. There’s a joyful feeling in belonging – finding an understanding of the world with the foundation of home beneath it.
What a terrible loneliness there can be in the possibility of having been mistaken…
Politics has made a business of that loneliness, turning it into currency and allegiance.
There’s a terrific amount of money in grievance! Some of it born of genuine injury, some encouraged toward discontent by those who profit from it. There is nothing new about convincing someone that their neighbor poses a direct fantastical threat to everything they hold precious.
In fear we seek explanation. We want rid of the feeling. I organize my life around dealing with it.
In seeking explanation, we find a certain need for sympathetic company. Slowly, that like-minded community may begin to ask, perhaps even demand, a measure more loyalty than the explanation was ever worth.
This is where it gets hairy.
Curiosity within the community becomes suspicious. An apology is regarded as an admission of weakness. Seeking to understand another person is mistaken for a willingness to surrender.
Better we stand on our side of the tape and congratulate each other for holding fast, holding firm.
Thanks for bringing the donuts.
Coffee was great today.
See you tomorrow
probably
unless…
We become so devoted to defending our principles that we begin punishing people for practicing them.
An honest question can upset a room that has mistaken agreement for peace.
I’ve been considering the brand of courage required to remain curious among people who are certain.
An outreached hand can be an unsettling gesture. Apology is treason, and inquiry is wavering faith. The courtesy of understanding is weakness.
We observe the foolishness of others from a comfortable elevation, assured of our remarkable good judgment, cavernous compassion, and the enlightened nature of our indignation.
It is our pleasure to display cruelty in such thin air, I’m afraid, and to do tremendous harm while believing ourselves to be doing right.
For a long time, I thought humility, as a matter of thoroughness, required me to doubt everything…there are things I know are true…things I can defend.
I think so.
There are injustices that demand resistance. More often than the people pleaser in me wants to admit, occasions when the kindest thing I can do is refuse to cooperate with what is wrong. That kind of thing is always easier to see tomorrow…
A conviction must remain accountable to the virtues that made it worth having in the first place.
There’s a prayer in that.
That I have the strength to be honest with myself. About the parts I know are good, and the parts that wish to be, but haven’t found their way yet.
One day at a time…
The willingness to be corrected. To admit, or at least consider, that my understanding may be incomplete.
To remember that the person who has wounded me is still a person. That the wound really happened. And there may be much to answer for.
It’s not the most fun thing I can think of.
I don’t have to extend a hand every time. And when I do, I cannot require it to be taken.
I can only control what I do. I am responsible for my own humanity. Even when my hand is refused.
So I think about the frightened people this morning. Some have suffered genuine injuries. Others have been encouraged to fear, or have inherited grievances so often repeated they’ve become indistinguishable from memories.
I consider, too, the people who are celebrating. The delightful relief and delicious temptation of being vindicated. There is such sweetness in feeling right, and a particularly savory pleasure in making sure another person knows how wrong they’ve been.
How readily we become occupied with the failings of an adversary. Such a wonderful distraction from our own.
We’re well content to neglect them. Humans man…
We seek accountability, as we ought. But sometimes what we’re really after is humiliation. I admit to wanting it in some self-serving way.
Punishment as entertainment.
Let’s have some cake and persuade ourselves that our pleasure is evidence of justice.
One day, caution discarded, we may discover that the qualities we so admired in ourselves were left along the path when the water got low and the sun got high.
Told ourselves we’d go back for them after we’d won.
At Appomattox, Grant stopped his soldiers’ celebration of Lee’s surrender. The rebels were their countrymen again. He had not changed his mind about the cause they served. And history would teach, painfully, that mercy for the defeated could not substitute for justice for those who had been enslaved. I don’t know if I learned that or just watched Lincoln rerun.
Either way, he understood that the people from both sides would have to live together.
Our country is an ongoing arrangement among people who have yet to finish becoming themselves. An imperfect and very worthwhile undertaking, full of old injuries and unfinished arguments. Still, something gleams in the considerable difficulty of being free among other free people.
The weight will shift again…
The tape will be put down anew. The old, flaked and cracked and bleached by the sun, will have left its mark.
So we’ll have more elections, and more mornings, and more uncertainty about our neighbors and the future we’re obliged to share.
There’s no requirement that we agree with them, or them with us.
The HOA will have something to say about the Christmas lights, however.
Some rules are sacred.
Matters of accountability, considerably more important than hedge height; the rule of law must mean something, especially to those most vulnerable to the exercise of power.
But remaining decent, beyond our convictions that we are correct, that we are right, that we are justified, is another kind of obligation.
To seek to understand the fear beneath another person’s conviction, that imperfect effort to preserve something precious and loved.
The institution of a nation.
The great experiment.
The big idea.
The best we’ve got.
Grace.
For others. Without demands or expectation.
For ourselves, the same.
It’s morning in America.
The roads need fixing. The kids need lunch. The bills need paid.
Someone will need kindness.
Someone we may not agree with.
I pray we won’t be too busy being right to be useful.