Finding the Glimmer of Hope Amongst Chaos

If your head wasn’t spinning on Wednesday, January 6, when our Capitol was besieged, that must mean you never got out of bed that day.

If you were able to make sense of anything that happened throughout those daylight hours, your capacity to understand that which is incomprehensible is probably greater than most humans.

If you woke up still celebrating the victory of the Democrats in Georgia the night before and kept that happy feeling going — even as our legislators were evacuated from the Senate floor that same day — you probably don’t mind it when you go to the beach and the kids bury you in the sand, including your head.

If political PTSD hasn’t set in yet, though the “T” is technically over, maybe you’ve already used up your stress allotment during these months of COVID-19 restrictions.

As for me, I feel like I’ve gone into a disco where the music is deafening, everyone is talking, but I can’t decipher a word. The strobe lights are blinding, my eyes are smarting from the smoke, there’s nowhere to sit, my head is pounding, and I can’t wait to go home.

With only a few days until the inauguration of Joe Biden, it’s like two opposing teams are tied in the last inning of the game. Our team is up with two outs, two strikes and the bases loaded. The very next pitch decides the game and the series, and it will determine all that will follow for the team, for the players and for the fans. The stakes couldn’t be higher.

I’m not sure who the real experts are any more. I am not confident that the pundits we have designated to be our eyes and ears, and often our brains and hearts, are necessarily better qualified than I am to interpret the constant eruption of unsettling information before we can process what happened only a short time ago.

Highly charged words like coup, insurrection, sedition, lies and conspiracy have lost their potency. They are intertwined in a macabre dance with words like democracy, values, truth and loyalty. Everyone speaks. Everyone hears. Few people listen. And no one understands.

I expected to exhale on the stroke of midnight as 2020 became 2021, and then I expected to inhale on January 1 as singer-songwriter Keith Urban’s lyrics suggest: There’s a new wind blowing like I’ve never known, I’m breathing deeper than I’ve even done. And it sure feels good to finally feel the way I do…  But it hasn’t stopped — the unease, the foreboding, the anticipation of I don’t know what’s coming next.

But throughout it all, I remind myself not to confuse anxiety with despair. In my usual way, I continue to look for the light at the end of the tunnel and think I see a glimmer. I see it in the words we use.

I almost missed it, though, on January 6, when President Trump concluded his hour-long address to adoring supporters by saying, “So we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, and we’re going to the Capitol and we’re going to try and give… [Republicans] the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.” You know what happened next.

The glimmer reappeared a short time later, when Biden addressed not just his supporters but the entire nation when he said, “America is about honor, decency, respect, tolerance. That’s who we are. That’s who we’ve always been.” I don’t think he mentioned a political party, an enemy or a betrayer in that speech.

President-elect Biden repeatedly reminds us that words matter. The words of the President matter. If, when he takes office, Biden acts as he speaks, the tunnel may become shorter and the light at the end of it brighter.

I really believe that. Words do matter. Not how many. Not how loud. They matter because of the intent of those who intone them and they matter because of the ears of those who hear them. They matter because of the actions that follow them. Words have the power to incite or to inspire. They have the power to tear down or to restore.

Words have the power to incite or to inspire. They have the power to tear down or to restore.

All of our words matter. I try to be a careful listener and choose to listen to the words that inspire and restore with the belief that the person who uses them also believes and will stand behind them.

Undoubtedly, if the past predicts the future, the next days will reveal people, personalities and events we haven’t anticipated. There may be surprises. Some may be distressing, others encouraging. Our heads will continue to spin until January 20 and probably beyond. Words will be the currency of our transition.

The words that come to mind right now are from the poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling, which I was required to memorize in the seventh grade and have never forgotten.

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

When I was in the seventh grade, none of us gave much thought to the gender allocation in the closing lines. But my English teacher, Miss Howell, knew that words matter and she chose wisely the words that would be imprinted on our young minds. Letting us know that life would challenge us all along the way, she gave us this poem that promised us “the Earth and everything that’s in it…” Good words to remember on these head-spinning days when I’m aiming to keep my head about me. Not bad to keep the light shining at the end of the tunnel. Only “if…”

Rochelle Ginsburg, educator, facilitates book group discussions for adult readers.