I didn’t watch the debate. I was at camp with the high schoolers from church, having my eyes burned out by the lights on the stage and my ears bleeding from the cranked subwoofers. I enjoyed it. These high schoolers acted like their friend groups weren’t big enough, and there was always room for more. It gives me hope.
Anyways, I still caught the despair of the nation from watching the two men who want to be President for the next four years. It seems like there are three camps:
“We cannot give the keys of the world’s largest economy to an octogenarian.”
“We cannot give the keys of the world’s second-largest nuclear arsenal to a maniac.”
“I want to die.”
Political dialogue seems bound for two places: despair and hostility. And neither of those are pants I want to wear. Forgive my analogy, but having to choose between selling my soul to squeeze into some ill-fitting britches or running down the street in my underwear feels like a fair image for the current political situation.
I’ve written entire posts dedicated to things I think are pretty, beautiful. I notice I’m prone to do it when things seem worse, which betrays that my goal is to just escape. We’ve been taught escapism is bad … unless you’re in prison for running down the street in your underwear. Then escape could be a good thing?
It’s so easy to forget beautiful things because beautiful things seem useless when you feel like you’re in a car driving towards a cliff. “Look at that spruce tree! Did the brakes start working again?”
For me, the beautiful things are reminders that despite what I feel, I’m not in a car, there’s no cliff, and if there is, it’s a little ditch. Even still, I’m on my own two feet with the dirt and the grass underneath me, the sky getting lost into the expanse, and I can breathe.
Something beautiful like:
When I was 7, my mom wanted to go to a ranch in Arizona. She wanted to ride horses through the grasslands like real cowpokes. I wondered if they’d check out six-shooters in case Johnny Ringo showed up. He never did, probably caught my scent and ran. Yellabelly.
One night at the ranch, our guide pointed to the sky and asked if we knew Orion. She showed us how the easiest way to find him is by his belt. When I stopped looking for a literal man in the sky and saw the three stars holding up his pants, the rest of him appeared. It was January when Orion is most visible in the Southern sky.
A year later, we went to Disney World, and one night while we were leaving the Magic Kingdom high on magic, I saw Orion in the sky above our rented Ford Excursion.
No matter where I went, the stars told their stories.
I like living in a world like that. It makes me think all this other stuff is just kinda happening for a while.
It gives me hope.
There’s always hope, Sam. Though our political decisions seem to be based on fear rather than selection of a candidate who aligns with our views currently.
I skipped the debate. I caught the portion where they argued about their golf handicaps. I laughed before shuddering.
We’ll recover.
Sometimes -- I wonder what it would be like if a candidate so outdid another in honor, if it would change it all.