And I was absolutely terrified.
Not of the party, the 10 four year olds, or the experiments... but of having the polished and put together moms from his class, that I didn't know well, in our teeny tiny messy house. Afraid of how they would perceive me, my party planning skills, the size of my house, my (utter lack of) interior decorating skills, to say nothing of my children and their pension for chaos. Pretty petty, huh? But I was anxious, snappy, manically cleaning, and legitimately sweating.
It ended up being fine - a gift to me, the first attendees arrived 20 minutes early, before I had the ability to feel like I should be ready, which ironically, made it easier to just be myself, and within five minutes, the first child had informed me "my house is muuuuch bigger than yours" - breaking the ice with laughter (and mutual embarrassment) and reminding me of how silly my fears were.
Fear is a funny thing - like a good whiskey, it's smooth and strong, and easily woos us into believing that it protects us and keeps us "realistic." And we - I at least - am often beguiled by its sweet embrace. (That's a fancy way of saying, I'm scared of lots of things.)
I'm currently terrified of the stomach flu that my 2 year old had. Among other things like: spiders, falling out of my window when removing the AC units, a skunk spraying me when I take the trash out, and stumbling over my words when I'm around other grown-ups.
This list is a little ridiculous, but truth be told, I am often crippled (or moved) by fears that are equally silly even though they're perceived as more genuine.
But like too many good whiskeys, fear often leaves me headachy and hungover, wondering where my metaphorical pants are and how I got to my current precipice.
It feels like fear is all around us in this season. Has been for quite a while. Much of the presidential campaign seemed to feed off of fear - fear of people who looked different from us, thought differently from us, or worshiped differently - fear that our jobs would be taken, our security compromised, our values rejected, and our finances misused.
Now, at least in my news feed, fear seems rampant as well - fear of a President with different principles than ours, fear of his leadership nominations, fear of his policies and their impacts on real people. Fear that we're in a hand-basket heading somewhere hot.
Media, our click-bait reactionary culture, and even our President's way of communicating, make it easy for us on both sides of the
I'm not saying some of those fears aren't justified. I think some of them are grave concerns that do need to be addressed, otherwise they will have truly damaging consequences. But not everything that is different than how I/my party would do things, is necessarily in need of an all-caps, freak-out-now response (that is widely shared, and gets many likes, but doesn't lead to constructive action).
Fear is an incredibly effective motivator. I cleaned my house like I've never cleaned it before, in anticipation of all those moms coming into our chaos. But it's a terrible hostess, because it's so self-consumed that it cannot really welcome real people well. It is a terrible policy maker, because it is one-dimensional, and pays no attention to the people outside its scope of benefit. And it's an even worse tool for empathy and understanding, because it always shouts and never listens. It does not build bridges, it does not solve problems, and it does not stave off the growing divide within our nation. And it's exhausting to always respond to everything with the high level freak-out that so many headlines (and politicians) seem to inspire.
Absolutely, action and protest and response are good - and needed. And while it is my broken tendency to lean towards being the "white moderate" that MLK spoke of, I am not intending to promote inaction. I am simply saying that we are better equipped to act and protest and respond when we do so in an intentional, level-headed, informed manner - rather than out of fear. And when we pick wisely, what, where, and when to respond, rather than simply reacting to every Democratic/GOP decision made or tweet issued. If you want to read someone smarter and better credentialed than me saying something similar, this was a great post in the Washington Post.
1. Inform. What are the facts? Has this happened before, or is this new? Know your sources and read more than one. Cut through the hype and the fear and the noise to get to #2.
2. Understand. What is the heart of this issue? Why does this matter? What's the impact? What do my liberal friends (that I know and respect) think of this? Why? What do my conservative friends (that I know and respect) think of this? Why? (Do I have any friends who think differently than me? Yes? Great. Do I talk to them? No? Point #3 should maybe be to make some new friends.) What do I hope the impact of the action in step #3 will be?
3. Take Action.
This is not necessarily a long process, but probably should take a few minutes longer than just clicking "share." And if a story headline begins with "You'll never believe what...", or "THE REAL TRUTH ABOUT..." consider it heart-and-brain healthy to not click on it.
The fear mongering - and our morbid intoxication with it - has got to go.
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