Walking across a really crowded Costco parking lot a few days ago I noticed someone smile at me. It was a real smile, a hopeful, kind, no-agenda smile. I instinctively blurted out “you have a great smile”. I’m prone to such things. She slowed down as if processing what I was saying. She replied “thank you for smiling back”. I then returned with “we just gotta spread the Love , there is so much grumpiness out there.” She got it. I may have made a new convert. Someone who bravely smiles in this terrifyingly polarized world. Pretty much no matter your beliefs, your narrative, your background we are convinced that the world is falling apart, or was a few years ago, or will be just around the bend. We just gotta spread the Love, period.
The world is on a collision course with environmental disaster or it is a great conspiracy exploiting natural planetary cycles. Most of us fall into one of those two camps. Both are very concerning and bleak.
The United States is going to slowly become Venezuela led by AOC and her ilk. All our guns will be taken away and everyone will become LGBTQA+. Or we are going to become a hybrid of Gilead and Putin-led-Russia with democracy a thing of the past. Both suck. Can I please have another option?
Half the country lives paycheck to paycheck. The old think the young are lazy, unrealistic, and entitled. The young see a world in which they will permanently struggle and the old are just delusional and irresponsible. The few in the middle of those two camps are too swamped with the challenges of their phase of life to think beyond the next soccer practice or orthodontist appointment. We are all stressed. Just be kind.
Oh yeah, national debt is nearly $35 trillion, approximately the same level as a percentage of GDP as during WWII. Did the Ukrainian war ever end? Destructive forest fires every year now in the West and year after year of sticky inflation? God help us when the next pandemic hits! We didn’t exactly work together too well during the last one!
But this is why we just need to be kind. We need to get beyond our narrative. The other guy has his narrative that he feels is just as obvious as yours. We can battle when needed, at the ballot box and in town meetings, but we need to stop the demonization and dehumanization. We can’t all be right. We can’t all be wrong. But, stress kills.
We have problems, we always have and always will. We need to be kind and open to learning and changing our minds. We cannot live in a world where a third of us are fighting to the death for the blue narrative, another third is going scorched Earth for the red narrative and the remaining third has simply given up because it sees the other two thirds as intractably insane.
No matter how small, how seemingly inconsequential it may feel, we need to smile. We need to be civil. We all need to. We all need to go for walks and call our friends. We all need gratitude journals. We all need each other. We all need hope. Hope is a practice not a possession. It is a process not a destination. It starts with us. And being kind makes me feel pretty good 🙂.
