We’ve already lost.
I’m writing this on November 3rd 2020. The time is around 12:30pm Mountain – so the election is in process.
Despite the polling, despite all the attempts to sway people’s opinions, despite all the arguments and anger that have polluted our national discourse for the past 20+ years, I am going to predict the outcome right now.
We’ve already lost.
And by we, I mean the people of the country that I adopted as my home. Not that one candidate or another has lost… I have a theory as to what is going to happen, but I honestly have no better idea than anyone else… but we as a nation have lost our sense of cohesion and togetherness that has defined us so greatly in our past; but sadly not at this moment, and not for the foreseeable future.
In short, we’ve lost our way.
As a nation we have divorced kindness in favor of vitriol, anger and hatred. I’m not going to assign blame, because there are players at the highest level, and there are everyday people we know.
Sometimes as a Doctor I have to diagnose the problem in the absence of cause, and in matters such as this, assigning blame is probably going to prolong the problem, because blame creates an enemy, and right now we need a lot less of those in our vision.
We need to be finding friends, and building communities.
Because although we are blessed with greater highways of communication than ever before, we have turned these into philosophical avenues of mirror, cul-de-sacs of a closed compassion where only the people on the same side of the road as us are worthy of the kindness and consideration that we should extend to all.
In one of my very favorite books that I read at least once a year is the chillingly prophetic line that I am afraid may be more true now than it ever has been before…
“Each revolution carries within it the seeds of its own destruction”.
The American Revolutionary War began in 1775, and like every revolution before it, there were winners and there were losers.
In less than one hundred years, the winners of that revolution had fractured and splintered into two, and fought another war, and now only 150 years later are conceptually on the precipice of another, philosophically if not physically (although that is possible too) .
Humanity, it seems, is still working through its ingrained nature of flaws.
So as we stare down the barrel of this potential nightmare, it’s incredibly easy to fall into the chasm of comparison, blaming whoever you perceive as your enemy for all of the problems that you see.
I’m not going to talk about who has the greater flaws, because there are enough on either side for those willing to see. I’m not even going to ask you today to vote, I’m hoping you have done that already.
Instead, I’m going to ask you to do something even more patriotic, and maybe even more American.
I’m going to ask you to care.
Because somewhere out there is going to be someone who is unhappy, and maybe even scared by the outcome of today’s contest of ideas and principles, failures and flaws. Given the levels of anger we’ve already seen, I’m guessing there’s someone that you know who could use a kind word, and possibly a friend to talk to.
Maybe all they need to is hear from someone who they consider as their enemy, so that they can realize that the world isn’t ending, and that life, and our communities, will go on.
And that peace is still possible, and very much preferable, to its alternative.
To quote the wonderful Samwise Gamgee, the beloved gardener in Lord of the Rings, “there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it's worth fighting for”.
The way we fight for good in the middle of what feels like a war is not by resorting to weapons, but by resonating the way of peace in our actions and in our conversations.
Especially to those who esteem us as their enemy.
So today, and tomorrow, and the days to come after those, may we be found among the peacemakers, and my we find within ourselves the courage and the kindness to reach out and connect with someone who may be hurting.
And may we find our way back to peace together.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings