I have to confess to being rather down on the USA lately. It is not the first time I have succumbed to this emotion, might it might be the strongest case so far. Never before have I found myself mentally counting the months until we might return to Europe.
The causes are obvious. We are all living through a pandemic. We see suffering around us and our own lives are restricted compared with normal times, while our fear of the virus does nothing to improve anybody’s behaviour but adds stress as we consider our mortality.
Living in the USA amplifies these causes and adds additional ones. Having lived through April in New York, the anxiety might be a bit higher. And the range of opinions and responses to the risk among individuals can make us angry. It really isn’t that inconvenient to wear a mask in public, and most people in most other countries don’t seem to equate it with an assault on liberty.
These attitudes are the real stress multiplier when expanded to include the whole, toxic, political environment. The lost opportunities here are a terrible human tragedy, acted out in real time and on a relentlessly downward path. I will have a pain deep in my stomach from now until the election, and probably afterwards depending on the aftermath.
The hardest part to reconcile is that regardless of the result, somewhere above fifty million people will vote for a man so lacking in competence and humanity as to be a caricature. He does not try to hide his personality and the results are obvious to anybody with the slightest curiosity, yet fifty million people will actively seek four more years of it. Fifty million.
When Hillary used the deplorable word in 2016 we all winced and knew it was a horrible error and also thought it was plain disrespectful. When I am in a good mood I still think that, but increasingly I have to stop myself thinking the same way. We can all see the ghettos and the homeless and the abused and the guns and the pitiful education and the broken healthcare and the greed and the filth and the potholes. We can all the narcissism and the gangsterism and the incuriosity and the hubris and the hypocrisy and the bullying and the recklessness and the callousness and the corruption and the lies and lies and lies. Fox News makes a token effort to obscure some of it, but surely it does not take more than a child’s intelligence and curiosity to look past that? Fifty million!
So I feel myself becoming negative, and that is not healthy for me or for anybody else. I am always at my most snide when feeling negative. So I need a campaign to restore positivity.
Let us start as usual with counting blessings. It is shaming how simple this is. All my issues with Covid are luxury first-world problems. True, all the reasons to savour living in New York City have vanished for the time being. But I can make rent. My family are thriving and we are enjoying each other’s company. I can live a comfortable, even complacent life. While so many have lost so much, I cannot complain about restaurants being closed or choirs being on hold. The US is making horrible mistakes, but I don’t have to worry about what I write or think, not yet at least, and I can always leave if I feel like it.
Next is to highlight the positive things that we still have. NYC has lost its culture for a while but its diversity is still intact. I can’t attend the US Tennis Open or the Mets in person, but sport on TV is back and the US does sports very well.
We are also locked out of our volunteering while the residents of the home are at such a risk, but we can go to church again. There is something very comforting about a quiet hour meditating along with wonderful people. It is healthy to actively appreciate things we came to take for granted.
There are other things I can do to fight the negativity. Now outdoor pools are closed again and the pool in my gym will not open soon, but at least now the weather is conducive to walking again. Too many hours on the couch each day is never a positive thing.
Taking on a bigger project also makes sense. I did this at the start of the pandemic by writing something substantial, and now I can return to that and improve it with another draft. Reading is always an enjoyable education.
But I can also return to my long-term goals and use those to find new priorities. Early music is on hold for now, but I can at least study and listen to it more. Slow projects are limited when most of our time has to be spent at home. But there is still some scope for enlightenment. Simplification has almost been forced upon us, but I can look for opportunities to simplify that are less temporary.
The scope from these three themes is somewhat limited and obvious, but the fourth one has rich scope. I have a goal to seek out kindness. And I am realising that a lot of my negativity comes from a shortage of that kindness.
In part, this comes back to the politics. I can’t change the atmosphere, but I can retreat from it. Everything I see and read makes me angry, so I can help my own health by seeing and reading more. I already avoid the pitfalls of social media, but I can also further restrict my TV diet.
There is more I can do to seek out kindness in my everyday life. I have come to realise that a lot of my appreciation of church, choirs and volunteering comes from the soaking up the kindness of the people I encounter with these activities, which in turn makes me kinder, or at least less unkind. It is comforting to believe that these things will all return, but I need to do more to fill the gap. There are opportunities with family. I have to be active in seeking these out and finding other things.
Negativity creeps up on all of us for time to time. It is a particular risk just now, with the pandemic. The risk is higher in the US because of the politics. So we will do well to look for ways to counter the negativity. The solutions will differ for all of us, though there will be common themes, such as counting blessings, remembering goals and fighting lethargy. Reducing twitter time would probably help most people too.
We can also help each other, even if our usual channels have been cut off. I have always valued and admired people who have a sunny aura, and recognise my own tendency to bring clouds. For the next few months, I will try to be a little bit sunnier, and a little bit kinder.
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