Getting my Bearings in a Haze of Futures
Today, I happened to click on a tweet of someone I follow and discovered that he was a HUGE Trump supporter. A banner photo of the president-elect standing proudly seared my vision as I got to his account’s homepage.
In a knee-jerk reaction, I unfollowed him and went back to my own page.
Right after doing that, I had second thoughts. Part of the reason we are in the mess we made for ourselves is because everyone, on both sides of the fight, are tailoring their informational input to suit themselves. Following channels and people that reinforce their worldview and beliefs rather than give them something to think about.
So, I looked for this person on Twitter. I remembered part of his Twitter account. Twitter probably has algorithms that ID him as someone I might want to follow, since I followed him before. I figured that it would be easy enough to find him.
It was. I went back to his account. I looked at his tweets and postings. Without re-following him, I went back to my home page, wondering why I ever came to follow someone whose worldview was so very different from mine in the first place.
Actually, I know the answer to that. He followed me over something I posted. I saw that he was a writer and I followed him right back. I’ve always seen my Twitter feed as being an extension of my writing efforts. Any writer that follows me will automatically (now “almost” automatically) get followed right back. I figure other writers are like distant cousins of sorts. All of us trying to get the words we find in the dictionary arranged in the right order so the worlds in our brains will be visible to all.
But clearly being in the same social gene pool doesn’t mean we have the same outlook. Being in the same genetic gene pool doesn’t guarantee that, either. I’m sure I have family members that voted differently that I did as well. I can’t be sure since neither I, nor they, have spoken openly about it. Probably for the same desire to not put too much of a strain on family ties than they can bear.
Pretty much everyone I would call friends voted for Clinton this election. Some voted “For Hilary.” Others voted “Against Trump.” I’m in the later camp. I can’t tell for sure the breakdown of everyone else, but right now it doesn’t matter much. Both groups are dazed, confused, upset, depressed, scared or some combination of those things. We’re all in the “OMG! What Just Happened?” camp.
At work I know a couple of people who voted for Trump. I ignore this fact and continue to work with them. One I don’t get along with very well, but I felt that way before their political views became known to me. That discovery didn’t alter how I felt, nor changed the way we work together.
The other is a close colleague of mine. Someone I enjoy talking to. She’s a citizen now, though she’s originally a Russian from Kazakstan. Trump has a way with Russians, I guess, from their president, to his wives, on down. Again, I ignore her political beliefs, work with her and talk about other things. I’ve not spoken to her a lot this week. Not unless it was work related.
I did say one thing to her. After checking on something with her, I stopped at the door to her office and turned around toward her. She was already engaged with her emails.
“So… How long do you think it’ll be before we all break down into civil war?”
“Eh?” She shook her head as her fingers continued to type. “What…?” She took her eyes off her screen and looked up at me.
“Never mind.” I turned around and left. “Forget it,” I said as I walked through her department. It was a dumb question, motivated by some dark feeling that slipped through my filters before I had a chance to consider it. She didn’t ask me about it again when we interacted later in the day, so I guess she took my suggestion to forget it.
I’ve been feeling for a while that the future was getting grayer. Less full of sweetness and light. With my sister’s cancer in resurgence, for the third time now, things at work becoming more difficult and unsettled, and my increasing awareness that I’m well into the second half of life, I’ve been feeling that there is less future out there ahead of me that I’ve been wont to think of it before, and that it has less to look forward to than I might hope. The election of someone I believe is completely unqualified to hold the office that almost half the nation voted him into has only darkened my mood.
But, I have things to do, assignments to finish, achievements I’m still working toward. A future that still needs facing.
The question for me is, which one? The hunker down, go to ground, become an insurgent in word and thought future. The sit still, keep my mouth shut and hope the Deportation Squad doesn’t mistake me for someone from somewhere else? Or the healing, understanding, be a force for love and good, peaceful warrior that will give safe haven to all that need it?
Or none of the above. Or, some combination of them. I don’t know.
What I think I do know, though, is that I ought to keep my eyes and ears open, and listen to what everyone else is saying, even if I think it’s vile, self-promoting, bigoted garbage. If I only listen to what I want to hear, I might find myself just as surprised by events as everyone was this last Tuesday.