written 27 October, 2024
published 3 November, 2024
I believe in science. The Earth is a sphere, orbiting the Sun, and the climate crisis is real, already destroying our economy. Trump and his MAGA followers believe it is all a hoax. Everything else follows from there.
In my opinion, Trump is selling fear, divisiveness, and increasingly demented rage, while the alternative is effective democracy. However, I understand Trump supporters are just as concerned about a Harris victory, convinced by their leader and Fox News that evil is afoot.
This article is first being published two days before election day, but most Californians who plan to vote have already done so. It will be reprinted elsewhere after polls have closed, but in a close race, the results may still be unclear. Which side will prevail? The stress and anxiety are affecting everyone. What is a person to do?
I suggest the solution abides within.
Start by sitting quietly, and listen to your heart beating. My heart has beat steadily more than 3 billion times so far. When it stops, I stop. While I can do things to affect the rate and duration, I have no control over the fact of that continual beat. It is a gift of life to me. I have done nothing to earn that gift. Feel your own heart beating, and be grateful.
Without breath, we expire. I have taken about 750 million breaths so far. Breathing is where the involuntary muscular system intersects with the voluntary system. While I can hold my breath for a while, or change my breathing rate, during sleep, breathing continues. Each inspiration draws in essential oxygen molecules, powering the biochemical carbohydrate combustion system that keeps me going. But a free oxygen molecule only last about 6 months before being chemically reacted into another molecule, and must be constantly replenished for us to live.
In my entire life, I have never paid anything for this essential life ingredient, nor have you. It is a gift from other life forms, mostly produced by phytoplankton in the ocean and trees on land. Notice your next breath. Feel it passing through your nostrils or mouth. Take another breath. Give thanks, and be grateful for the living planet that freely offers you this gift.
Paying attention to my beating heart and my breathing, brings my awareness into this eternal moment. I have the immediate essentials for life, and am at peace. As I continue to focus on my breathing, this calmness endures. I AM, part of the larger living holism of life. From this sense of internal sufficiency, simply being, I can contemplate the outer world.
Those who cultivate fear want to induce anxiety in other people or our society. Perhaps they are fearful themselves, and unwilling, or unable, to deal with it and want to spread it. Some choose to sow fear as a tool of domination, because fearful people are more easily controlled. Physiologically, fear depresses the digestive and immune systems, as well as the higher brain functions, so decision making passes to the more primitive reptilian brain. Our individual challenge is to choose a different path.
Most fears are concerns about what might happen, not what is happening right now. Things happening right now can be dealt with right now, but the future hasn't happened yet, so fears of the future can linger, get amplified, and fester. In every moment, we decide where we put our conscious attention. Rather than indulging in fear, either externally generated, or more insidiously, internally generated, we can focus awareness on this present moment, now.
In the calm awareness of the moment, pick a desired outcome, and hold that focus instead of allowing fear to run amuck. Even if we forget, and fall into fear again, each instant, we have the opportunity to choose again. With practice, our quality of life improves, becomes calmer.
Additionally, we all radiate energy. You have experienced being with an anxious person, whose energy adversely affects everyone else. Being calm radiates as well. This is something we can do, with wide ranging, and unknown, consequences.
Like it or not, we are all in this together. Even MAGA Republicans are oxygen breathers with beating hearts. We can choose to live our reality inclusively. It is simple, but not easy, because of life times of patterning. Repeatedly choosing calmness over anxiety is an act of empowerment, which can be done anywhere, without needing permission.