Thoughts From Six Feet Away: Small World

In the immortal words of Robert Plant, “It’s been a long time…”

I will be the first to admit that I’ve lost a bit of my mojo lately. Writing is very much an activity of passion for me, and I’ll be honest, I haven’t been feeling it lately. In addition, I’ve been experiencing some unique moments. My alma mater, the losingest football program in NCAA history, is 8-0 and being discussed in terms reserved for the elite programs. I even checked off a bucket list item and saw IU play in the Rose Bowl against UCLA in September. And while we’re on the topic of the bucket list, I realized another dream of seeing the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony a couple of weeks ago. It did this middle-aged rocker some good to see Peter Frampton, Foreigner, and an all-star tribute to Ozzy Osbourne, all in the same night.

I’ve learned to embrace these joyful moments; I’ve experienced a host of personal losses in the past couple of years. More than that, the world seems to be a miserable place. There is suffering everywhere you turn, and the quiet desperation in those I encounter is palpable at times. We are ready for conflict at a moment’s notice, ready to “put up our dukes” to fight those that have slighted us, in an actual or perceived way. We are quick to anger, and we deny forgiveness. We ask for grace from others in our struggles, yet we withhold it from anyone asking for the same in return. The common good has given way to personal ambition. And everyone is always so angry. People are primed to assume the worst in any situation, and they seem genuinely surprised when a majority of their dilemmas stem from honest, HUMAN mistakes, rather than from an agenda of persecution aimed at them.

Perhaps it’s the aftermath of a global pandemic, forcing us to isolate ourselves and causing our human relations lessons to atrophy. It’s easy to feel like the world is against you when you are literally alone, after all. I think future societies will be able to look back and say that the psychological damage we sustained from the years 2020-2022 will not only affect us, but generations to come. However, COVID pales by comparison to a specter whose insidious influence gripped us in its dark clutches long before anyone had known what a coronavirus was:

Politics.

It used to be something we didn’t discuss in polite conversation. Only intellectual blowhards would debate it prior to the mid-90s. By 2000, it had taken us months, not a single day, to know who the next president of the United States was (thanks, Florida). It created a distrust, an “us vs. them” mentality that began to look more like a Yankees/Red Sox game than a civic institution, meant to govern our country. Partisan politics became the rule. The ability to compromise went from being a feature of a good leader to a character flaw, wielded by an inferior. Our country is split into equal factions of red and blue. People cry foul, stating we’re violating the terms of democracy (for the record, we’re a democratic republic, not a democracy). We’ve allowed ignorance and misinformation and confirmation bias to lead us to the scariest of places: a place where we no longer know what truth is. In our current political climate, where compromise is dead, the only way that things get done is by seizing power altogether, leading us to the slipperiest of slopes.

It’s no surprise that most of us are anxious and afraid. And even if we could force ourselves to be objective, we have a media that thrives on fear, knowing that it will draw attention quicker than anything; I watched more TV in the days after 9/11 than at any point since. Every day in my office, I see anxious people, worried about the state of the world and convinced that the results of the upcoming election could mean disaster. I often comment that the way to learn where someone’s political leanings lie is to find out why they think the world is ending. The sobering reality is that ALL OF US think the world is ending, it’s just a matter of why. Talk about a terrible place to have something in common. Better late than never, I suppose.

I refuse to let politics affect me. This is astounding to my friends and family, Democrat and Republican alike. More than once, I’ve been asked, “How do you do it?” My answers tend to be simple. I don’t subscribe to rhetoric – I choose to believe what my eyes and ears are telling me, rather than listening to someone tell me what I should think. I abhor double standards. I also remind myself that I survived the last four years, even though I was told the results would be catastrophic (they weren’t). Finally, I have a simple plan for when the world is overwhelming and big…I make my world small.

It's a simple strategy, really. Some would call it “controlling the controllables.” I can’t change the tide of American politics outside of the vote I’ll cast next week. But you know what I can do? I can be a good husband to my wife. I can be a good father to my kids. I can be there for my friends when they need me. I can take care of my patients to the best of my ability and take steps to be what they need me to be. You know what most of the people I meet have in common? They’ve don't know the President, but they know me. I owe it to them to be the best version of me I can be. And if I’m in the corner, chewing my fingernails and wringing my hands about the future, I’m of no use to my fellow humans. And I sure as hell am not going to hate someone because of some perverted justification of their hateability. Hate is still hate, no matter toward whom it’s directed against.

Perhaps the bit that distresses me the most is what I’ve come to call political prejudice. There is an epidemic of believing that if someone doesn’t think as you do, then they have nothing of value to add to a discussion, and they are treated with overt hostility. I continually remind my kids that someone with whom you agree can lie to you, and someone you disagree with can tell you the truth. Our presidential candidates are both guilty of this, and it’s a bad look. Battle lines are being drawn, and cries of, “If you’re not with me, you’re my enemy,” abound. It’s heartbreaking to see this awfulness manifesting as the fragmenting of families and the ending of longtime friendships. A family member once told me she had a political disagreement with a cousin, and she was content to agree to disagree. The cousin fired back, “No! You’re WRONG!” This is an abomination to both the religious and the non-religious alike. It makes me sad to hear that some of my patients haven’t spoken to their families in over a year over politics. Maybe we’re convinced that our way is right, but I’m going to simply say that in the past, when someone turned their back on family and friends, it wasn’t called conviction: it was called joining a cult. If you’re willing to cut off your lifelong support system to hang with like-minded individuals, you’re being brainwashed. Wake up.

I will remain in my small world for the foreseeable future, at least until this political nonsense ebbs somewhat. Now, more than ever, be excellent to each other. I will refrain from suggesting you party on, for fear that you may think I’m talking about politics. It’s no party I want to attend.