This made me feel a little better
Hey friends, welcome to an unusual edition of Follow Friday. I hope you’re doing OK.
If you’re feeling sad, angry, bitter, or betrayed right now… that is valid! I know I am.
I don’t have the usual links or podcasts for you this week, just some personal reflections and a bit of advice after the US election.
That’s down below, but if you do nothing else, please read For One Who Is Exhausted, a Blessing by John O’Donohue: “Imitate the habit of twilight, / Taking time to open the well of color / That fostered the brightness of day. / Draw alongside the silence of stone / Until its calmness can claim you. / Be excessively gentle with yourself.”
My yoga instructor read this poem in full at the end of her (very well-attended) class on Tuesday night, and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head. So here are some AI-generated ducks being claimed by calmness:
🕰 2016 vs. 2024
On Gianmarco Soresi’s podcast The Downside this week, comedian Lucas Zelnick reflected on being in deep-blue Brooklyn Wednesday morning: “You’ve never seen so many devastated liberals in one room as a coffee shop in Bushwick. It was like being at ground zero on September 12th … I think 2016 was shock. And this feels like defeat.”
This resonated with me, and I don’t want it to. I do not want to be defeated for four more years.
During the first Trump administration, everything felt like it was spinning out of control, but that chaos motivated me to be proactive in my own life, where I could. I learned to cook, started eating healthier, and left the stifling suburbs for the city, where I met the woman I would later marry. I stopped living life on cruise control.
That was a frenzied atmosphere, though, and the pushback to the chaos was loud and frequent. When every day feels like defeat, it’s harder to find motivation.
But I have a plan.
✅ My priorities
The night of the election, my partner and I made lists of our top priorities in the likely event of a Trump victory. Every time I have thought about the list in the days since, it has made me feel a little better; I’d recommend this as an exercise if you’re feeling lost.
Your own list will vary, but mine is:
Take care of my partner and myself
Be there for our friends and families
Support our communities
Be healthy
Be hopeful
With these defined as my priorities, I’ve realized that there are many things I don’t need to do: I don’t need to get back on social media, to yell about politics (even though there are certainly a lot of people who ought to be yelled at now); I don’t need to water down my principles, to “get along” with the people who voted us into a dark an uncertain future; and most importantly, I don’t need see that future as one game, which is either won or lost.
Rather, I want to acknowledge that the years ahead are going to be really, really painful for a lot of people — and to then look for opportunities where I can make things a little better. There will be many losses, but with care and compassion, we can also create wins.
“The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything,” Rebecca Solnit wrote, “and everything we can save is worth saving.”
🗣 Your turn
I hope, in some tiny, tiny way, that the fluff and nonsense you typically see on this newsletter helps you; maybe a video I’ve shared makes you laugh, or a podcast makes you think.
But if you’ve read this far and you’re so inclined, I’d love to hear from you: How are you feeling, really? What sort of stuff would help you if you saw it here? And what are your priorities now? Feel free to reply to this email, or you can answer anonymously here.
Thank you, and please: Be excessively gentle with yourself.
🙏 Hey, thanks!
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