"I Don't Know" -- Door to Freedom?
If you’re like me, you felt despair last week and more than a bit baffled how the election could have turned out the way it did. I know I traveled a long distance through a thicket of emotions.
Over the weekend, a friend shared an essay by author and activist Anne Lamott. It conveys where I eventually landed.
A few excerpts may resonate:
“Definitely, this is not ideal. We are in for a dark and scary ride.”
“I don’t know. God, do I not know….. At first that might seem like the end of the discussion, but if you listen to my personal husband, Neal, that’s actually the beginning.”
“’I don’t know,’ he suggests, is the portal to freedom…. It opens up possibilities. This gives us a shot at being curious, rather than certain, which is a dead end.”
“I don’t know what we do next, although I am going to take a walk and a nap at some point today, take care of people who are really suffering, and get everyone a glass of water.”
“Why aren’t I freaking out more? I don’t know. I just believe in goodness and radical self-care and that grace bats last.”
Today, like Anne, I have cautious hope. I realize I’m not alone in this. There are 69 million of us who are unhappy with the election results. And we’re not just going to roll over and die.
Just-In-Time Messages from... I’m Not Sure
I can’t believe how important messages come to me “just in time.” I listened yesterday to an episode of Hidden Brain podcast, called “The Benefits of Mixed Emotions.” The guest was a psychologist who studies emotional ambivalence— both its downsides and its upsides. The main downside is that other people generally perceive ambivalence as weakness or indecisiveness, rather than wisdom or caution.
However, as Lamott’s husband knows, expressing mixed feelings in a fraught situation creates an opportunity to slow things down, learn more about something, view it from different angles and invite more people into a conversation. I also found inspiration last week in the new book Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness, by Stanford psychologist Jamil Zaki, author of The War for Kindness. (See my earlier post, “The Business Case for Empathy” about Zaki’s work about kindness and empathy as essential leadership skills.)
Zaki describes his personal journey from cynic to “hopeful skeptic” – informed by the example of his dear friend and a lot of research into the ways cynicism hurts our mental, social and physical health. He distinguishes between optimism – the belief that things will work out for the best — from hope, the belief that good things could happen, depending on several factors, including our take on a situation.
Zaki concludes Hope for Cynics by encouraging readers to overcome the passivity that “easy cynicism” justifies. He invites us to take small steps to make a difference in whatever way we are called to. As Kamala Harris exhorted in her concession speech last week, we must not give up hope. There’s much work to do and we are all needed.
At the same time, we can practice radical self-care by taking a break from doomscrolling and reaching for uplifting true stories at Upworthy.com. And maybe check out Adam Grant’s interesting perspective on our inability to accurately predict the future.