I usually write a blog at the beginning of the month, but somehow, this month, January 2021, I couldn’t.
I had nothing to say, and no heart to say it from. I felt so tired inside — tired of acrimony and drama, tired of the fighting and fear, tired of the insolation imposed by the pandemic which is now raging in my part of the world.
And yesterday, inauguration day in the United States, I was gripped with computer problems, accounting mysteries, relationship shifts and couldn’t watch the celebration.
But today I began to touch in to what happened in America yesterday. Joe Biden became the 46th president of the United States, and Kamila Harris, a woman of African American and Asian American decent, became the 46th vice president of the United States.
I could say a lot about it, but all I can feel at this moment is profound relief. That moment four years ago, when in the middle of the night I found out that Donald Trump had become president of the United States is encapsulated in my mind — that wonder of what would happen, the feeling of everything turning upside down and inside out.
I had no idea.
But now, it’s starting to be over. We all know that the time has come to heal and re-build anew; on the national level in leadership, in the collective body of this nation, and ESPECIALLY individually. Each one of us has the opportunity to scan our lives for who we leave out and what we will not listen to because we can’t tolerate it.
I loved Joe Biden’s innaguration speech. And I have a big question. Can we, in our inner hearts, include the human beings who were the mob that broke into the Capitol Building in Washington D.C. two weeks ago? Is there a perspective they hold that has some grain of truth and wisdom for us to hear? Is there a way of looking at what happened that does not demonize?
We make the ‘other’ wrong when we believe we are being attacked. We very instinctively draw back and close ourselves. Then the gap between us is created. Today, the attack comes on our identity, or our imagined future safety, rather than on our actual physical bodies or property. But the reaction is the same — defend ourselves to the death.
But if we step back a pace and take a look are we not defending things that are not real? They may feel super real, but our identity and future imagined safety are not real. They are ideas in our heads.
What is real is that human being that we defend ourselves from. No matter how much we disagree with what they may say or how they may live their lives doesn’t change the fact that at the deepest level they want the same thing we do. Safety. Respect. Inclusion. The complexity and context of that person’s life is disregarded by us when we are defended against them. The only way we can know the reality of that person is to soften and to listen.
To soften and listen is the greatest act of strength and power there is. Not everyone can do it and I doubt anyone can do it all of the time. But to know that IS what we SHOULD do is a start.
I have a hunch that President Biden (oh gosh that sounds lovely, doesn’t it?) knows this deep down. I sense that if he were to have a one-on-one talk with young Jake Angeli, the QAnon shaman, he would soften and listen, behind closed doors.
So. Here’s to a new day, a new road and a new way of being American.