As the divisiveness, hate speech, violence, and all the negative energy that characterized the campaign continues, post election, I keep hearing the phrase “it is what it is.”
I’ve been hearing that phrase for some years now, and almost always in a tone of (at least momentary) belligerence or resignation.
The fact is, no matter who you voted for or against, no matter if you were among those who felt there was no good choice, but still did your best to educate yourself and vote responsibly anyway, the results of the election were never going to put an end to the divisiveness, aggression, and even violence – regardless of which of the two “won.”
In the words of popular culture: haters gonna hate.
People who commit violent acts are not doing it because their candidate lost or the other won. Normal people don’t change into violent people overnight, and certainly not because the candidate of their choice lost the election. They don’t commit violent acts as representative of a specific group. Just like everyone else, they behave the way they do because that’s the people they’ve chosen to be. The election results are just the current convenient excuse.
As is true for everything in your life, what happens from here is your choice.
You can rail against the perceived injustice, you can mourn or be fearful at “the end of the world as we know it,” or you can choose to see the situation as an opportunity. An opportunity to become more involved in the way you, your loved ones, and your community are governed and served by the people elected to office, more involved in the process by which those officials are elected, more involved in working to change what needs changed and repairing or replacing what no longer works.
No presidential candidate can do all that, no matter what they promise. It’s up to you.
There is no birth without pain, there is no change without destruction, there is no moving forward without leaving something behind. But you get to choose whether you’ll be part of the new life, part of positive changes that have us growing and moving forward, or if you’ll stay behind, locked in the old paradigm of “us” versus “them,” of “my way or the highway,” of “might makes right” and mob rule. YOU decide ~ not whoever was elected.
Because it really isn’t: “it is what it is” ~ end of story. In truth, it is what you decide it is, and where you decide to go from there.
Your choice. Always has been.
Great post! I commented on a blog months ago (one that was reminding people to vote) that voting was what you do when you barely care — when you really care, you get out and work, you give money, you give time, you make an effort. And when you lose, you try harder in the next election. I didn’t this cycle — too much going on in my life, plus a life really not conducive to volunteering for a campaign right now — but I agree that we should treat these election results as motivation to get out and do some good in the world, not just reason to despair.
Thank you for commenting on (and reading! :-)) my blog, Sarah 😉 I apologize for not seeing/getting back to this . . . have no idea why, but I didn’t get notice that someone had commented. Gonna have to dig into that. ;-/ Great to hear from you though, and cool ’cause I’ve been thinking about you for a couple of days (I’ll go tell you about it on your blog or via email 😉