I kind of want to do some sort of “wrap up” of the last year. It was definitely … something. But, the feeling that I must write something that will incapsulate everything is exactly the sort of thing that would keep me from writing anything at all. To misquote Inigo Montoya, “Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. [There is also too much.]” There is so, so much. Everything all of the time. I am overwhelmed.
But, also, everything feels the same. Nothing is different. Everything just keeps going, all of it headed—seemingly—nowhere. I had to read Camus’s La Peste (The Plague) in college, and it turns out he wasn’t all that far off on how pointless anything and everything ends up feeling after a while.
Meanwhile, we’re all bickering and at each other’s throats. The existence of a life-threatening virus. Vaccines. Masks. Election results. Historical events. The shape of the earth. Basic facts are up for debate, and it seems all opinions are being treated as equally plausible. It’s exhausting and I am a little surprised so many of us are still participating in this “dialogue” (notice that I said “us,” meaning I include myself in this criticism).
A Few Things I’ve Learned
All of this being said, there are a few “lessons” I’ve learned this year.
Some People Are Worse Than I Ever Knew Or Thought
I was appalled to see so many people vote for Donald Trump. As most people know, you don’t actually have to “win” the election—in the sense of the words that “win the election” which most of the rest of the world would generally accept—in order to be the President. Donald Trump wasn’t the first President to get the gig this way. Still, the fact that he was even “in the running” was absolutely terrifying, hilarious, and mind-boggling all at once. Then, to know that I personally know so many people who voted for him made to kind of shocked and confused. Still, I think there is some truth to people voting for the person most likely to “move the country” in a direction they like, rather than actually voting for any individual. Basically, “their personal life doesn’t matter; I am voting for [insert pet cause].”1 Personally, I think integrity matters, at least some.2
I, as a lot of people, had hoped that somehow actually being President would change the way Donald Trump acted. We thought he would be “presidential” once all of the campaigning, etc. was over. But, I think we were, mostly, wrong. That’s not a huge surprise, I suppose. But, what I didn’t anticipate, was how having such a crass individual residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave would change people I know. Or, rather, how it would bring what might have been the “real them” lurking somewhere behind a façade, so confidently to the surface.
Since November of 2016, I have observed with a mixture of shock and heartbreak as I have watched people who I once looked up to, people who were mentors and advisors to me as a teenager, people who I thought were good, kind, charitable people turn into absolute monsters. I was raised in a relatively conservative religious environment, which naturally skews pretty reliably “to the right,” politically. I was sad, but not totally shocked, that so many of these people voted for Donald Trump. But, I had thought they did so out of allegiance to some sort of “greater good,” be that a hope for anti-abortion legislation, an aversion to social programs, or other “right leaning” issues. Maybe some did. What I didn’t expect was for these same people, people whom I admired as a kid, to turn into terrible, horrible people once Trump was in office. These folks were suddenly comfortable spouting all sorts of vitriol toward minorities, “the Dems,” Muslims, and whoever else DJT decided was the enemy du jour. These are people I would never have pictured using profanity or using racial/sexual slurs … and yet, I have seen several of them do exactly this on Facebook over the last few years. For some reason, it took me until this year to really come full circle in realizing this. I think the fact that Trump is no longer President and these folks are continuing to act this way might have something to do with me finally making this connection.
So, what I am now wondering is if this is who these folks really are (and always were), or if some sort of transformation has happened. Were these people just waiting for someone like Donald Trump to give them permission to act like assholes? I think there is something about a person in power “setting an example” that might have been the thing that gave these people the permission they needed to act this way. Were these ideas, words, and beliefs always just below the surface waiting for someone to make it “ok” to say, think, or believe them out in the open? Something tells me they were. Or, have these people been sucked into Donald Trump’s cult of personality, and they are, quite literally, not themselves anymore due to his magnetism? Honestly, I am not sure which explanation is better.
Give Us Convenience Or Give Us Death
Another thing I’ve learned along these same lines is just how many people will absolutely insist on notdoing slightly inconvenient things in order to help stave off a literal plague. I can wrap my head around why someone might be against “forced vaccination,” but what’s the big deal about wearing a mask for a few minutes or even hours while you go grocery shopping or fly across a continent?
I have always been a bit of a pessimist, a little bit cynical, a little bit suspicious. The last year has made me more so. Partly in an effort to try to combat this, and partly because I found Utopia For Realists to be very well written, I’ve been reading Rutger Bregman’s Humankind. The central premise of Humankind is that our species is a fundamentally kind one, one that cooperates and generally “gets along.”3 This, in contrast to the way we tend to see ourselves—a species that is fundamentally selfish and in a constant struggle against each other. Bregman uses lots of anthropological data to back this claim. I admire Rutger Bregman quite a bit, and I don’t doubt his research; but, the past year(s) has made it really difficult for me to see people as kind or cooperative when so many aren’t willing to mildly inconvenience themselves for any kind of greater good.4
I Need To Practice A Lot More
This year, I learned that I need to practice everything a lot more. I took classical bass lessons for a few months in the first half of 2021, and I was reminded of how lacking my bass playing is. I need to practice a lot more. I took another French class during the Spring 2021 semester. And, while it went relatively well, I need to practice speaking, reading, and writing in French quite a bit more. I did ok when we were in France this summer, but I would rather be better than just ok.5 I need to practice my sense of calm a lotmore.6 I need to practice being simple rather than complex. I need to practice giving people room to be wrong about things without me feeling the need to “correct” them.
Some Questions
When I sat down to write, I had a few ideas of what I wanted to say, but now that I’ve started, I am thinking of many more. I don’t want to make this particular post drag on, so it seems best to reserve space for future writings about all of that stuff.
But, one thing I am still trying to sort out is how to ask certain questions. I’d like to think that working in a college means I work in a place where I could go to ask tough, thought-provoking questions, but you’d be wrong. In fact, some of my colleagues are the last people I would go to with difficult questions. Far from it being a “safe space,” I am finding academia to be pretty unwelcoming of certain lines of inquiry. This is really frustrating because feeling this way puts me into company with many folks I’d generally like to avoid having by my side (for fear of being confused as sharing their beliefs, among other things). In fact, I am a little scared of the next few semesters. I feel like it’s only a matter of time before things get really gross and/or I walk away … but toward what?
2022
I know new year’s resolutions are kind of silly. I know we’re all setting ourselves up for disappointment and/or failure by setting big goals at an arbitrary time. Still, I like the idea of sitting down and thinking about what and where we want to be and what and where we don’t couples with some reflection on howwe might get there. Every failed goal is still movement toward something, which isn’t so terrible.
I haven’t put a ton of thought into what my goals/resolutions might be for this year, yet. But, here are a few:
No more soda. Or, more specifically, no more sweetened sodas (“diet” sodas included). I am one of those weird people that prefers sparkling water when it’s available; I am not counting that as “soda.”
Some sort of exercise most days. What counts as exercise will be a pretty low bar: any sort of movement that lasts more than ten minutes will work.
More practicing. As a musician, this is supposed to be part of my lifestyle, but it hasn’t been for a long time.
More writing. I want to write something most days, even just a few sentences.
Of course, it’s likely none of this will mean anything in a few months.
This gets harder to believe when the same people will rail against certain individuals’ personal lives. Clinton’s and Kennedy’s philandering or Quayle’s spelling skills come to mind. ↩︎
I say “some,” because all of us have lapses in our integrity and none of us are probably really “worthy” for any sort of Integrity Olympics. ↩︎
Bregman actually uses the description “Homo puppy” to describe our species. ↩︎
And/or, will accuse those that are honestly trying to do something that might be helpful of being “ignorant sheep” or claim it’s all “virtue signaling.” ↩︎
My study/practice of Dutch took a bit of a backseat once I got “into the thick of things” with my French class. ↩︎
A lot more. ↩︎