“No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be good.”
—Marcus Aurelius
I’ve had the same conversation over and over again: What the hell are we to do when the angry mob takes control, tears everything apart and then gets outraged when people are outraged by their behavior? We can have contempt for those who voted for this, or we can seek to understand what they were so damned angry about that got us here. We might feel it’s all misguided bullshit stirred up by media and foreign actors, but the world is more complicated than that. Seek first to understand…
It’s too easy to just blame it all on stupidity alone. They aren’t stupid, many of them anyway. Why were they so angry and contemptuous? Why are they still, having gotten what they wanted? Maybe it’s because deep down they know they screwed this up and it’s now coming for them. At least it feels nice to think so. But that’s us projecting upon them. There’s entirely too much us versus them already.
Good can be exhausting. Reason and logic in illogical times can be a slog. We must be good and reasonable anyway. This is our time to do the right thing. This is what our birth lottery gave us. Be grateful, be graceful, and be determined to be good. It will bear out in the end. We must find calmness in the storm. We must leave a ripple, not just flush it all away.
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