The sun actually rose this morning.
There were a few times late last night and early today that I wasn't so sure it would happen, but damn if it didn't. It's a crisp, late autumn day in New Jersey, and the wind is kicking up a bit. More leaves are blowing around my lawn than I care to think about, so at some point today I suppose I should get a rake out of the shed and take out some of my frustration on the yard.
Before my daughter drove me to school this morning (she has her driving permit and gets her license in two weeks, so she's just starting to taste a little four wheeled freedom by driving to school with dad in the passenger seat), I told her I was proud of her and to always hold her beliefs close. She's taken some heat lately from some of her classmates for her passion and activism. My son will get the same speech later when I see him. Both of my kids are among the most politically and socially aware people that I know in their demographic (apple, tree, etc.), and I'm sure they're both heartbroken today by the results of the election. Neither of them have been tempered by life yet. But the sun rose for both of them this morning as well.
Me, I'm still processing my own feelings. Losing a battle like this, particularly after so much emotional investment over so long a period of time, is a tough thing. A lot of people on the left are going to be braying into the wind today and caterwauling about what went wrong. And I'll admit, it's kind of hard to find an upside to what we face this morning.
I do know this: no one's going to have to talk me off of a ledge. My personal political beliefs don't change simply because a clear majority of Americans chose not to reject a creeping neofascism in America. I take some small comfort this morning in the fact that the world's been down this road before, and the human race still survives. We're hardy species like that. Kind of like chickweed or cockroaches, if you will.
In the big cosmic schema, maybe things truly do have to get worse before they get better, as some on this forum have suggested in the past. Maybe there does have to be some type of fundamental revolution of thought (and action) that could not have been accomplished by simply deposing the Boy King. And perhaps that's the message we need to take from all of this, even as much as the path we might have to take to get there scares the beejesus out of all of us.
Take heart in the fact that those of us of a "like mind" here on ASZ (and many of the thoughtful forums listed over in the left navigation menu) have found each other, and come together in an ad-hoc way that I really didn't think possible 12 months ago.
I know this: almost everyone that's taken the opportunity to become part of our little family is committed to change. Our ability to immediately affect the necessary "change" became a little harder last night, but maybe (in the coming days) we'll understand that it gave us greater clarity of purpose, not lesser.
So hang in there. We'll ride through this day. And tomorrow. And the next. And then we start building on the foundation that we've put into place. Over the past year, I've been very deliberate in putting together the blog list on the left of your screen for a simple reason - it is the foundation for a small movement.
When we've all licked our wounds, the real work starts. Frederick Nietzche summed it up nicely:
Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
For the moment, I have some leaves to rake, and then I'll share some more thoughts.
