Concerning the Next Four Years

This past Saturday, I was driving to work at REI when up ahead I saw flashing red and blue lights and several police cars. As I got closer I discovered that they were moderating traffic for a “Hands Off” protest of the current presidential administration.

I had no idea such an event was scheduled to happen in every single of the 50 United States, and not only in cities but also in rural parts of America.

As I looked in my rearview window, I couldn’t help but think that we are living in history. People will absolutely talk about the period from 2016 to 2028 in American politics.

For the rest of the day, I contemplated what I had seen.

The news has been called an “endless outrage feedback loop,” which is spot on. It is entirely driven by a narrative of “Can you believe this? What about this? Aren’t you annoyed at this?” I find the news to be immoral in that they are designed to keep people’s blood boiling and to ostracize the hypothetical “Other.” Tribalism is all over the place, and both sides of the political spectrum believe berating the other and excluding them from doing collaborative problem-solving is the solution.

Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist, taught us that everything that annoys us about someone else is closely tied to what our subconscious is trying to teach us about ourselves. As a result, what we tend to do is cut out and hate the “Other” who personifies some part of our own personality that we are embarassed by.

Truly, everything is our teacher, even our political “Rivals.” (I put “Rivals” in quotation marks because any spiritually healthy individual would say there is only “Us,” not some category that creates an “Us vs Them.”)

This brings me to the next four years.

I don’t want to be reactive. I also do not want to fall into the endless outrage feedback loop. I want to get into what John Lewis called “Good Trouble.” I want to speak and embody the values of listening, patience, accountability, compassion, true righteousness, reconciliation, etc. I refuse to become stuck on some rollercoaster of emotions instead of the slow work of being creatively good for the people in my circle of influence. In essence, I don’t want these next four years to go by, and I have a few more gray hairs because I was dragged around by the times we find ourselves in. I would much rather have a few more gray hairs because I committed myself to helping the world around me clean up its issues, grow up and take responsibility, wake up to the fact that we are all spiritually connected, and show up to the present moment ready to help wherever needed.