I spent about an hour this afternoon with a good friend at our local coffee hangout, Downtown Subscription, here in Santa Fe. The topic of our conversation was, as usual, the election. What went wrong and how. Who was to blame, if anyone. How to “fix it.” As we talked in low, even tones, I could hear the anger and frustration behind our words. Even though we spoke of healing and reconciliation, we were still furious with the rigid stance of the patriarchy, the ongoing misogeny, racism, bigotry, gross dishonesty, and just plain greed— in this country and in the world. We were painfully aware of the extent of the divide between different groups of America’s people– and even more painfully aware of how we ourselves have contributed to widening that gap. “Given all this,” I asked, “how can we really come together?” “I don’t know,” she replied. And indeed, we don’t know. “But we have to try,” I added. She agreed, and we planned to meet again soon.
Later, though, I remembered that when everything falls apart, it’s usually because something else is coming into being. What this will be is unknown. Perhaps it’s something this society, this planet, has not yet experienced. We hope it will be good, benevolent– that at minimum it will cause no more pain– that it will acknowledge the deep wounds of the millennia and somehow begin to heal them. But if we are truly honest with ourselves, we are also exquisitely aware that it will be what we create, through our thoughts and the actions that follow them.
Charles Eisenstein speaks to this most poignant of moments in human history in his essay The Election: Of Hate, Grief, and a New Story.
If we are to heal, this is what we must continue to remember: we really are what we think.