It was 78 and sunny when I set out to traverse the winding roads that lead to the arboretum. The familiar drive takes me by an old-time roadside tavern and at least one split-rail fence behind which horses graze. I looked forward to playing in the light of newborn autumn. Such is my idea of a perfect day.
Except.
Except this time, the rural landscapes along my way were littered with campaign signs. The farther I got into the country, the more advertising I saw for the candidate I deem most likely to murder our democracy. (Use your imagination.)
I drove. I stewed. I passed a quaint antiques store I had shopped at decades ago, noticed a sign in the front yard, and muttered two uncharitable syllables. I tried to pull myself back to the blessing of a Saturday unburdened by obligations. Then I'd pass three lots in a row that trumpeted loyalty to a despot, and my mind would slip into wondering: Are these people evil or just stupid?
Then I'd scold myself because I knew better. It is often--maybe even usually--neither of those. It is maddeningly more complex. I'd think briefly about how the other side asks the same questions about OUR signs.
After about five miles, tension gripped my shoulders. I was drunk on bitterness, not just about these property owners' voting intentions, but because they were ruining my perfect autumn drive. I regarded the signs as trash illegally dumped on my personal vistas. Then came the self-recriminations for THAT line of thinking.
It was a relief to arrive at the arboretum. I swished through a field of sparkling wildflowers and got buzzed by dragonflies. I went crazy with a new phone app that uses photo uploads to identify plants. I drew a little forest of mushrooms in my sketchbook, and I figured out a different way to use lines to describe a tree in full leaf.
I forgot all about the campaign signs until three hours later, when I was back on the road and headed for home. But this time, fully chillaxed by nature, I was determined to ignore the red-white-and-blue bluster. There was no way to avoid SEEING the signs if I wanted to drive without crashing, but could I decide not to brood?
For months now, I've been hot on the trail of the secrets to staying sane in crazy times. Spoiler: My list is short and semi-effectual at best.
But good God, remember January 2017?! Weeks of keening and wailing on social media by people devasted about the results of the election. This describes most of my friends. This describes me. We posted an avalanche of reporting and editorials, of women's march photos and ironic memes. We made daily revisions to the hypocrisy report card of the new guy and his enablers until, frankly, it became impossible to keep up.
For a while, hyper-vigilance seemed the obvious answer to what ailed the nation. Many of us deduced that if we were loud enough, we might do a hard reboot on the country. Help our neighbors see the light. Return the place to previous levels of dysfunction, which now looked like heaven.
You can judge whether you think the loud-large-and-obsessive approach has made things better. It sure has been hard on the spirit.
Somewhere along the line, I started to see my Facebook cris de coeur as worse than useless. The minute I would share my outrage, the comments would tumble in, echoing and amplifying my anger. It was intellectually satisfying but emotionally wearing. Every post became the starter dough for chagrin that blew up into a fat loaf of despair.
I've been trying to do better at taking care of my brain these days. I give myself about a C-minus for these efforts, although reading and sharing less about politics has been helpful. Journalists, God love them, are front-line workers for our republic. I'm beyond glad that they're on the job. Yet in the name of self-preservation, I now turn away from much of their good work.
It's useful to know one's limits.
More than two years ago, I dramatically changed the way I eat. The program I follow was built for people whose brains are wired for food dependency. For us, it's easier to eat no sugar than to eat it in moderation, so we don't eat sugar. You might think that, deprived of sweets, I would dwell on, say, all the doughnuts that I am no longer "allowed" to eat. The opposite is true. I never think about doughnuts. If I'm in a space with a box of doughnuts, I dispassionately look away.
I can't do anything about doughnuts. Doughnuts are none of my business.
And neither are the people who put up signs to support the enemy. If they are evil, I can't save them. If they're stupid, I can't educate them. If they are people who simply put the world together differently than I do, then, with four years of my best thinking behind me, I can't understand them—nor do they care. They don't need or want my understanding. This I know.
So on the drive back from the arboretum, I decided those signs can be like doughnuts. Or, maybe more to the point, they can be like roadkill. I might see the poor raccoon, but I don't have to cogitate on why he couldn't drag his sweet striped tail across the street intact. No need to dwell.
So there it is, today's sanity hack, such as it is. My vote in November? That's all of my business. In the meantime, I'm going to do my best to keep my eyes turned to sunny skies.