We Can Think Anything Now
There are no rules anymore. Let's write our own.
I’ve stopped paying attention to the news. For the week leading up to the election and the week following, I was completely soaked in information, but starving for wisdom.
I obsessively read and listened to everything I could get my hands on, in the hopes, I suppose, that someone could tell me what to think and how to feel.
So many opinions, all framed as the truth.
But the truth is no one knew what would happen, and no one knows what will happen next.
We’ve fallen into one of those moments in history — which I suspect are cyclical — when impossible things start to happen.
Where I left off.
When I stopped paying attention to the news cycle, I was grappling with the following:
The utter insanity that a former reality TV host is going to be the leader of the free world for a second time.
The fact that he may have cinched his win by going on the podcast of another former reality TV host.
The evidence that absolutely anyone — even the worst person in the entire world for the job — can be nominated for, and likely win, a position of immense power (President, Attorney General, Secretary of State, etc.).
The realization that we’ve arrived at a moment where horrific, disgusting, anti-human opinions are no longer disqualifying, but instead are for many proof of fitness to lead.
It was all a bit much.
This could be an opportunity.
Unplugging has been glorious. The overwhelming fear I felt is basically gone.
I wish things hadn’t gone the way they did, but I no longer feel that I have to pay such close attention to the slow-motion car crash. I don’t have any role to play in it.
I can’t change the past, and I already know how I feel about it. What I can do, perhaps, is live from here with an intention to do good in the world, in my limited way.
But I also realize that a moment like this — when anyone can say and do anything — isn’t something to run from or ignore.
Maybe this is happening in part as a reminder to all of us that we need to question the structures within which we live.
Those who did vote for the person who will soon be President again aren’t eager to burn down the system just for fun.
They are tired of everything feeling like it’s out of their control.
They are tired of being told that things are going well when they don’t feel that to be true.
What world would you make if you could make anything?
I don’t agree with their choice. But I also don’t want things to go back to how they were.
I want things to go forward to how they should be.
That means a world less soaked in late-stage capitalism.
It means more honesty and human connection.
It means privileging other people over ideologies.
It means putting down our phones and picking up our bodies and dancing together.
I don’t know what to make of where we find ourselves, but I’d like to make something of it.
If you are not happy with the way things are going — in the U.S. or around the world — maybe this is a great time to imagine that they could go somewhere else.
And then for us to go there, together.