How can we use our shared anxiety to lessen our anger at the other side.
“A Frazzled world holds its breadth while the U.S. chooses its leader,” shouted the New York Times Saturday morning. Seventy two hours is a long time to hold your breadth, so I don’t suggest you and I DO that. Besides, we may not know Tuesday night or even Wednesday morning.
“Americans Surge to Polls: I’m going to vote like My life depended on it,” roared another NYT’s headline. Almost jumping out of my seat I hear myself cheering, “yes, the blue wave is coming.” You? Oh yeah, you, on the other side of the stadium, without your mask on, prodding your unstoppable red team down the field.
SHARED ANXIETY
What are you and I supposed to DO as we travel together toward Tuesday? We’re both on edge, anxious, looking for signs that our side will win or not win. Tucked cozily in northeast Iowa, this morning I awoke to a howling wind, coming out of the northwest, YIKES, “out of red state South Dakota.”
“A bad sign,” I thought, and then checked to see if my six blue signs in the front yard were still standing. Battered , beaten, and frazzled from months of Iowa weather, there they were, still upright, as if they had just read the latest FiveThirtyEight polls. And then I looked across the street at your sign, hoping to see that the wind, now blowing from blue state Minnesota, had latched onto your BIG sign, wrenched it from the ground, sending it to blue state Illinois or soon-to-be-blue Wisconsin. Alas, there it was standing tall, as if it had just read the latest Des Moines Register polls.
I want my side to win on Tuesday. I do consider the 2020 American presidential election the most important of my lifetime. I’m betting you feel the same way. Our political differences are real and deep and lead us to want a different America. If this was just about you liking strawberry and me liking chocolate ice cream, then maybe our anxiety levels in the days leading up to Tuesday would be lower. But America’s 2020 election is not about ice cream preferences but about what kind of country America is and should be. If you and I share nothing else, we do share anxiety. What can we do about that?
ACCEPT AND LEARN FROM YOUR ANXIETY
We should accept our anxiety as natural and a sign the stakes are high. Anxiety only attaches itself to things that matter. Thus, it can teach us something. Don’t run, ignore, argue or repress it. It is not your enemy.
Ask it to sit down and talk to you about what is on its mind. I have learned to respect and listen to my anxiety. By personifying it, I lessen its power over me. The more I have come to accept and learn from my anxiety, the easier it has become to understand that each human being I meet each day is probably anxious about something or very likely many things. Even you and your different vision about America and your support for THAT candidate.
Befriending my anxiety not only creates distance from it and me, it creates a distance between OUR differences and my anger at you. It does not reduce our differences, they are real and heartfelt, otherwise we would not both be anxious about Tuesday. However, once I turn and face my anxiety and take it seriously and learn from it, I naturally come to see you as an equal person. How could I not? Anything that helps me understand me, helps me understand you. And if I understand you, it is impossible to hate you. If I don’t hate you, I am less likely to fear you.
If I don’t fear you, I come very close to welcoming your membership in this wondrous cacophony we call American democracy.
Perhaps you can do the same.
