The Still Point

I was all set to be such a good winner.  Gracious in victory. Not gleeful.  Kind and compassionate to anybody heartbroken because their guy lost.

And here we are.  I’m the one who’s heartbroken. Bewildered.  Disbelieving. 

He’s not my president! He doesn’t speak for me or represent my values. He is not who we are as a country. All true, these statements.  But also, a tantrum.  What I want to do is roll on the floor and howl like a toddler.  Refuse to watch or read anything he or his allies do or say in the next four years. Not give them any more real estate in my head.

The inconvenient truth is, he is my president -- or will be.  My fellow Americans picked him, which maybe feels like a bigger betrayal than anything else. But if I am to call myself an American, I have to acknowledge that he is my leader—at least technically. I believe in American ideals like free and fair elections, rule of law, and peaceful transfer of power.  I don’t get to follow this stuff only when I win. 

There was an aspirational slogan to this ultimately unsuccessful campaign: we’re not going back.  I would tweak that to read: we are not going away.  There are hundreds of thousands of us who got activated over the past decade by the realization that democracy is not a spectator sport. I don’t get to engage in it every four years and expect it to flourish.

I will leave it to others to explain what happened in this election.  But I do believe our country is on a journey to becoming something other than what it’s been.  In time—I’m not sure how much time—our faces will be more colorful than white; our day-to-day practices more diverse; our world views less tied to old European cultures and ideologies. Ideas about race and money and privilege and who gets to be in charge will get challenged.  We’ll see things differently because, as a people, we will, in fact, be different.  This is demographic fact. It is coming.  Efforts to hold onto an old order through gerrymandering or voter suppression or disinformation will ultimately fail.  And that scares the bejesus out of millions of people. 

I wish we didn’t have this four-year detour into whatever the hell it’s going to be. But I do believe it is a detour. 

And so, eventually, I will pick my howling toddler self up off the floor, take a few steps, and probably, start to run. 

Last Sunday, I ran a meditation workshop at my Unitarian church. It was supposed to be a survey course: what kind of meditation is right for you?  After November 5, I called the organizer and said I wanted to change topics.  I wanted to explore how possible it was for us to re-claim a place of inner peace, when we are battered by the events of the world. 

A lot of people showed up.  A lot of people are suffering. I started with my usual: a guided imagery session to quiet the mind, calm the nervous system, get closer to the subconscious.  In silence and affirmations, we explored two things: the still point, and our power to choose.

In Buddhist meditation, the still point is a place that describes our true, essential selves -- before the world piled all the roles and responsibilities on top of us.  Not wife, mother, brother, father, writer, Bay Area resident, Unitarian. Not what we do. Who we are: humans deserving of love and respect as a simple matter of birthright.  The still point is a pool of calm and peace that we can come home to, again and again, to find strength.

For our power to choose, I cribbed from Vicktor Frankel, a 20th century psychologist and Holocaust survivor:

Between stimulus and response there is space.

In that space is our power to choose our response.

In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

When something big—maybe something awful—happens to me, can I pause, breathe, and say in best Buddhist, non-attached fashion: Hunh.  That happened. How do I want to respond to it?

I figure if Viktor Frankel can do this with imprisonment in a concentration camp, I can probably do it with an election outcome I don’t like. I leave our Sunday session calmer, more focused.  

I won’t deny the painful reality of this election.  But I won’t succumb to it, either.  I won’t give it more power than it deserves.  I will not cede my well-being to anything or anybody. Especially, a person who hasn’t earned it.  

And, once my tantrum is over, I will re-join the fight.  I will keep pursuing a society that is kinder, better, fairer, more democratic.  Especially for those who, unlike me, have been locked out of the dream.

Author’s Note:  in a few days, I will post a recorded version of the Still Point Meditation in the Meditation section of Encantado.  If you are having trouble viewing that section, try your computer rather than your phone.