Louisa and I have two short shorthand questions we pose each other with some regularity. One is, "Now?"-we'll be walking on a trail somewhere, or sitting watching a sunset, or just sitting, and one of us will pose the "Now?" question. That is, what, as best as you can tell me, were you thinking the nanosecond before you heard that word? It's sort of an exercise in self-awareness, to go instantly from "just being" to "just thinking"-about what "just being" means. We hold no copyright on the exercise, it's yours, with our blessing.
"Now what?" has almost the opposite connotation. We'll have finished something-a hike, a get-together with friends, a meditation session, and the question here, instead of asking, What was just happening with you, asks, "What's about to happen to you?" (or perhaps, with us?). I woke up this morning, November 5th, 2008, with two phrases ringing in my brain: "We won!" and "Now what?"
We won. How sweet it is. What a relief. The eight long years of distorted reality are almost over. Eight years of never knowing what the Bush administration was going to pull next. Eight years in which time we saw the invasion of not one, but two, countries which weren't threatening the U.S., the ugliness of Guantanamo Bay and the Patriot Act, a saber-rattling foreign policy and a mean-spirited domestic one-the list goes on. Healing from all this will take a long time. Not to mention the long, hard grind involved in getting the economy back on track.
So now we have the promise of a smart, thoughtful, reasonable, young, articulate and energetic guy who we trust will lead us out of the wilderness. Louisa cried last night as we watched his acceptance speech with our roomful of friends here in Eureka. She was crying for her mother, Sarah Flinn Rogers, who died thirty years too early to see a black man win the presidency-Sarah's life cause was to eliminate this country's long legacy of racism (she and Tom met in the early civil rights struggles). So Louisa was much more aware than I was of Barack Obama's color, and all that signified, what a powerful statement that conveyed about how far the country has come. I think of him as a smart guy who happens to be black, she sees him as a black man who happens to be smart.
The election brought us, here in California, one big win and one big loss: a fledging "bill of rights" for farm animals, including chickens and veal calves; and loss of the right of gay and lesbian couples to marry. We celebrate one and mourn the other.
So now what? For the country, and for President-elect Obama, it's going to be a rocky road ahead as euphoria gives way to reality: a faltering economy burdened by a ten-trillion dollar debt, two unwinnable wars, continuing use of fossil fuels even as the fact of global warming become obvious to the most skeptical conservatives. Well, we're just gonna havta git busy, as Sarah Palin would say.
And us, Louisa and me? How are we going to be affected by yesterday's pivotal election? How can we take advantage of this dramatic political win to create a personal win? That's the big "Now what?" for us. How can we integrate what we're already working on, what we believe in, what we know, with the way we want to see the country move?
* Xenophobia-how can we use our travel-savvy to break down some of the us-versus-them mentality in many Americans, especially by encouraging them to travel out of the country?
* ...Specifically, Mexico. How can we leverage our house in Guanajuato and our love of that country into breaking down the barriers between the USA and its southern neighbor? (Especially changing the knee-jerk reaction that we often hear regarding the plight of illegal immigrants from Central America.)
* Movement and fitness. The country's getting fatter and more unfit. Louisa's got a lot of great answers-how do we get them out into the world?
* "Affluenza"--the belief that more stuff will make us happier. So many of this country's problems stem from "bigger and better"-cars, homes, TVs, you-name-it. The last fifty years have seen a doubling of average wealth, while average "happiness" has marginally dropped, according to most surveys. My answer is to take great note of, and be thankful for, what we actually have, versus what our (paleolithic!) brains tell us we need. How do we promote that oh-so-obvious solution?
We invite a dialog with everyone and anyone. Comments, questions, solutions. We're wide open to re-thinking where we're at ("Now?") and where we're going ("Now what?"). We'd love responses--you can reply directly here to the blog.
In any case, we encourage you to ask yourself the same question we're asking ourselves: how can we leverage yesterday's win into personal wins?
Yes we can...but can what?
