I feel like something has died. I have so much grief. I am so disgusted with the potential outcome of our Presidential election that I can barely stand to speak about it. Is this really going to happen?
November 9, 2016
I was feeling hate toward everyone that voted in the direction I did not. I stayed in that place of anger and pain for quite a while, I just could not shake it, and then eventually I did.
Today
Today my emotions are calmer and I am coming to grips with our new change in power. While my initial reactions lingered with grief I now feel it is my path to be part of the solution, to move forward and work together with grace and live the *middle way.
As with every encounter in life, I know that sometimes what appears “to be,” isn’t. Meaning we don’t get to choose how the change will look, it can come in the MOST unlikely forms. This is NOT to say our new change in power was “right or wrong” but rather to say let us put that ideal of win or lose to rest and try to focus on forwarding movement.
There is always a force greater than us (I call it Life, some say, God, Source, etc.) that is guiding all of our paths, yes I did say guiding, and our role is that we get to choose how we will respond to it…this is co-creation.
Over the course of the last year, we all watched and participated (in varying forms) in the hate and fear from both sides of the tickets. This election has brought out what has been present and has been building for quite some time in our country. Americas’ shadow is out in the open for all to see. It has taken this election and its results to fully expose it.
It is our personality that compartmentalizes it into right or wrong, just or unjust. But it is STILL hate/pain. So how I react is my shadow of hate. And perhaps I then project a displaced response towards another area of my life, there again is my shadow. Hard to identify but ever-present.
I am going to ask you a question that my friend Kathy K. asked me after sharing how she was going to make a difference: “What are you going to do?”
T.C.
* Buddhist tradition: The middle way is the path between two extremes.