If it were about 12 years ago, I would have shared that Atlantic article. I would have said “if you weren’t affected by the way he disrespects immigrants, or women, or the disabled, maybe you will care that he also disrespects the military and is surely itching to misuse it”.
You can’t trust a narcissist. You can’t trust a lot of politicians, for sure, but definitely not narcissists.
I would have also shared several religious leaders’ posts about the way people will use religion to manipulate and misdirect. The spiritual danger of making idols of politicians.
I feel heavy, lonely, sad.
Election season will be over soon and we will live with the consequences, whatever they will be. In a culture ripe with conspiracy theories and anger and division, I struggle to feel optimism about any of it.
In a time when I don’t feel like I can even share my true thoughts, beliefs, or concerns with some of the people closest to me, I wonder how many others feel that way.
Does everything seem volatile to everyone? Are we all standing on rumbling fault lines, thinning ice, crumbling cliffs? Is the entire country a volcano on the verge?
Or are most of us just curling in upon ourselves into little groups that shut everything else out where we chant the same refrains over and over to one another, believing that we are completely right and true and best?
Like many people, feeling alone in a crowded room is not a new sensation for me, but something about it feels different now. These virtual spaces are full of real people and it feels just as lonely – almost more so. And how we act and what we share in our virtual spaces affects our connections when we are in person with one another.
Where in the past, I may have been slow to connect due to my own personality and penchant for extensive observation before engagement, now I question engaging at all. How close can you be to anyone when you have to hold your tongue, nod and smile, laugh it off? How worth it is it to try to forge some connection with people who have made it clear that they don’t respect or understand your values or your application of faith? When it is clear that they are not going to engage in any discussion in good faith? Can I engage without spewing my guts on everyone with everything bubbling up inside me as I watch things go sideways all around me? I feel a fire in me but how can I say anything without it seeming like a call out? I’d rather call in. I just don’t know if anyone is interested in coming in anymore?
How much difference can I make if I opt to be authentic? Will it breathe life into some other soul? Will it turn any tides in anyone else’s heart or mind? Are people still willing to let that happen? To let themselves care? Will it push people farther away? Will it make me lonelier, sadder, heavier? I don’t want to be more distant from friends or family. I’m not interested in scorched earth, shutting everyone out who doesn’t see it my way. But it’s hard to watch people and see the distance grow all on it’s own. Like we live in two different worlds, unable to fathom one another at all in some ways.
Loving the people right in front of you from so far away feels bleak.
I know apathy and pessimism aren’t the way forward. I know walling ourselves off from one another is dangerous. We are better together. We are designed to live in community, to hold one another to appropriate standards, to care for one another in times of need.
This is not a game. It’s not a meme. It’s not a chance to sneer at and disparage one another and combat with competing conspiracies or Bible verses. But that’s what it feels like. Somehow everything is being taken too seriously and also not seriously enough at the exact same time.
I used to think what I wrote and thought and shared mattered. But lately, deaf ears, harsh words, and hard hearts abound. Is anyone out there still listening, still thinking, still trying?
Am I?
