How Do We Deal With This?

Our Audacious Steed Comes from a Nearby Field

“President Trump and his administration and their allies are counting on the notion that fear can be contagious. But what they’ve overlooked is that fear is not only the only thing that’s contagious. Courage is contagious.”
Kamala Harris, in her first speech after the election, delivering remarks on Trump’s First 100 Days

“The days began to lose their mooring to the known world, and every sound and movement, and the work needed to maintain the routine, intensified my attention: the precious nun; the isolation of the house at the end of the road; the ice-packed sea; the chance of a flue fire or slipping on ice; the threat of not being able to walk through heavy snow down the long driveway to the road where the car was parked, or not being able to back the car out of a snow bank. With my senses on high alert, everything felt new, astonishing, and alluring, and nothing felt safe.”
Helen Tworkov, Lotus Girl

How do we deal with this?

Who can answer this for you but you? Who can tell you the best way to conduct your relationships or the very best diet that is good for you? No meat, ever? Or a juicy cheeseburger twice a month? A lot of bananas, rice and nuts? Or a hefty bowl of salad with free-range chicken? Oatmeal after morning yoga or a protein shake after a 7-mile run?

Please.

I think there are more diet, exercise, and lifestyle gurus now than there are wildebeest roaming the plains of Kenya and Tanzania. But none of that is this.

As for navigational advice in these fraught, unsettling times, well, what works for John might not work for Leslie, and what works for Shonda might not work for Carlos. Most of us get this. We adapt based on who we are and where we’re coming from.

So I can only tell you what I have come to after no small amount of anger and upset, and my own particular American vertigo.

It’s this: ride the horse in the direction it’s going.

No, that does not mean hop aboard the Trump train. No, it does not mean a surrender of ethics, principles or what’s important to you.

It means that – as much as we want this all to stop and as much as we might want to go back to, say, the Obama or Clinton years, or some equivalent -- that’s not where we are.

THIS is the wave we must surf -- not the wave of our carefree youth or the wave of 2012. This is it.

The waters are not calm nor are they pristine. They’re these dark waters; brackish and swirling, with the wave these waters form being of a certain intimidating size. We gulp. We say Holy shit. But this is the wave we are on. Listen, we have all been through unpleasant, challenging and scary times. And you surfed those waves. How do I know? You’re here, aren’t you? Life was not the same, but you made it to shore.

As for riding the horse in the direction it’s now going – you have no choice. Sure, you can veer off onto another path and eventually make it to a large harbor and then take a boat to Panama or Portugal. But…

But 99% of people won’t or can’t do that, and if you could you’d be leaving everyone you love, care about, have spent some time with, and those who you are okay with and those you are quite fond of… behind.

They’d still be on this wave. And no matter where you went to, you’d still be on this wave in your heart-mind, and in your thoughts, dreams and daily existential uneasiness. Even on a sailboat off the coast of Lisbon.

THIS. This is the horse we’re on. This is the wave we’re on. Ride or die (as in, go ahead, attempt to disappear. Good luck). Surf or sink down to the depths.

So here is our snorting, audacious steed, running not from but with these fearsome beasts. From some unnamed place it came for us, knelt before us, and now we’re astride it.

Ride it in the direction it’s going, only now lean forward and slap the beast’s hindquarter with the end of your reins. Go even faster, ride harder, gallop with gusto. Raise your butt off the saddle, really lean in, shout into the din of the dusty wind. Keep moving. Keep yipping. Don’t hide. Own the ride.

In wilderness, or in unfamiliar wild spaces, we steady ourselves, senses heightened, and we gambol and sway with all that is fierce, unbound and uncertain.

In wild times, we can enter the passing whirlwind to embody wildness itself. After all, it’s not permanent, it’s just a tunnel.

Now, in these wild times, there is no room, no leeway, to fantasize about another time, or to lasso images of safety or what made us feel secure in our childhood. We’re on the damn horse. And we realize in motion we are free, so we hold the reins, and we have heart, which means we’re sometimes afraid but we’re doing this anyway. That’s the courage thing: accepting one’s nerves and moving forward just the same. Up the hill, and then over it, and then here, fast, and there, faster. And as we gallop, we say to ourselves, but not in words…

To hell with him.