The above photograph would never have been taken if not for Donald Trump. And believe me, I do not want to be Jesus Christ or Mother Teresa. Every word of this piece is about being healthy, not saintly.
I sometimes think that wisdom and empathy – two things that are precious to me – can be found in the fragile thread between two sides, between two opposing points of view.
In our country, we often move to the extremes of either side, but in my life, the truth is most often found in between. I understand that is the idea of democracy.
To listen to someone is not to excuse them or forgive them, to empathize with someone is not to let them off the hook. To listen to someone is not to sell out or abandon my values. It’s just the opposite. In the Fall, I will be working hard (not here) to replace Donald Trump.
There are always two sides – at least – to everything, and the geography between them is the sacred ground.
Anger and resentment are corrosive; they are not good for me. I can do better.
What I want to say here is that empathy is a tonic, a healer, a pacifier. It works to bring me to a better place; it isn’t some Pollyanna notion of goodness; it is the bride to real wisdom and peace of mind.
In my selfishness and, hopefully, honesty, I can say honestly that President Trump has been good for me in surprising ways, but also, beneficial.
I do understand he has been horrible – awful – for many people, his cruelty and rage and dishonesty are unfathomable to me in a President, or anyone else.
But they are not only fathomable to many millions of people, but they are also excusable, increasingly woven into the way our government functions and the way almost half of the country wants it to function.
I have a clear choice: rage and anxiety, or understanding, and personal growth.
My responsibility to myself and others is to make the right choice. When I look at all the bile pouring out of the “left” and the “right,” I mean to do better than that and to stay grounded and at peace within my own life.
When I picture who I want to be, I never imagine myself arguing, I picture myself listening.
Beyond voting, doing something about Donald Trump is too big a challenge for me. I work on a smaller plane – small acts of kindness, doing what good I can, leaving the arguments and hatred to other people. I believe in democracy to the bitter end. Like it or not, I accept the people’s wishes.
There is the most obvious way Donald Trump has been good for me, and others – he sparked and inspired my work with the older adults at the Mansion and the refugees and students at Bishop Maginn High School. I would not be doing this work were he, not the President. A lot of people I care about – we care about – have been helped as well as harmed, as a direct consequence of his existence.
He challenged me to learn how to listen.
So many people love and support him and find faith and meaning in him that I wanted to understand why this is so rather than merely fume and fret about it. I embraced the idea of empathy, the standing in the shoes of another, and this is what I realized: empathy is meaningless if I only feel it for people I love and agree with.
So I listen whenever I can to the people who support him. I always put myself in their shoes and try to understand where they are coming from.
We talk all the time about the need for love and compassion, but something in the human spirit balks at practicing it, it’s well down the line of essential things to do.
So President Trump taught me to do good rather than argue about what is good.
He taught me about the importance of truth and authenticity, something I liked intellectually, as an idea, but didn’t always practice.
Every time he lies, the truth becomes more important to me, and many others.
He has rekindled my sense of myself as a fact-seeking journalist, a feeling that was washed away in the corporate takeover of media, from which I fled. Truth does matter. Facts do matter. I am coming out of the closet as someone who cares a lot about the power of writers to help people find the truth, like one of those old cops on TV who return to duty to solve a case.
President Trump has turned me into a patriot for the first time in my life. I love Thomas Paine again; he was a truth-teller in his own time.
So Donald Trump is teaching me to value perspective. Our country will survive; our world is not doomed.
My role as a writer is not to argue the old and tired cant of the left or the right; it isn’t to tell other people what to think. It’s to help them feel their way through this dark passage and get to the light on the other side.
Because of President Trump, I awoke to the beauty and importance of my country, flawed as it is, and it’s great power to be a force for good in the world. As the child and grandchild of refugees, he inspired me to honor the promise and hope of America and to fight for the people who come here to be free and safe.
My idea is to offer perspective.
Mr. Trump also challenged me to try to understand my friends and neighbors – and so many others – who see him in a different way than I see him, rather than dismiss them as being fools and bigots. In this way, I have learned much about the importance of community and friendship, both of which require patience, understanding, and tolerance.
That leads to empathy.
I help no one by going on Facebook and taunting the people who love him. It would hurt me much more than them. Empathy is just what you will never see at those awful rallies. That’s why it’s so important.
The only way to understand empathy and possess some is to try to feel it for the people I don’t love, like, or agree with. By listening rather than arguing, I have come to understand better why so many people support him.
I want to understand what is happening.
This doesn’t change my mind about him, or make me want to vote for him, or overlook the terrible damage he has already inflicted on the idea of government, but it does soften my heart and calms my spirit.
It leaves me available to do good and feel good.
Donald Trump taught me to embrace acceptance.
Life is not just about what I want or like or agree with; it is very often about the opposite – disagreement, disappointment, violence, cruelty, death, sickness, Pandemics, politicians.
Acceptance is not about forgiveness or naivete – I see Donald Trump clearly – it is about accepting the reality of him, and the many people who support him, rather than merely raging about it.
This is yet another hard thing to do, perhaps one of the most difficult spiritual challenges of my life.
President Trump taught me to look beyond his lies and deceptions and even his predatory sexual nature to try to see what he means to people and if any of his ideas are good and worthy and overdue, as so many people believe. Some of them are good.
He has done so much harm to so many people; it is easy to be blind to the extraordinary pull he has for so many people who have been left behind by the rest of us. They want real change, and so do I. At some point, that will come together.
Demagogues come when the government breaks its promises to people. It is a great and shocking irony to accept that Donald Trump keeps his promises to people. That is the core of his appeal. I might not always agree that he keeps his promises, but the people who support him believe it for sure.
Because he is so easy to hate, he challenges me to love and shows me by inverse how important it is. I call it learning backward. Think of the next President using his or her Twitter feed to help a needy family in America, every single day. How easy that would be.
Sometimes I see his presence in our world as a doctorate in learning to be better.
Sometimes we learn by copying our followers and leaders, sometimes we learn by being different than them.
Empathy can be a Holy Grail, a way of being grounded and peaceful; he offers me a clear path to making those things real for me.
Empathy lives in the space between two sides. It can always be found there.
Thank you for this I totally agree with you. We need to learn about Trump and his followers. It is so interesting.
Jon, I feel this is probably the best and most meaningful piece you have ever written. You move through the polarity of “argument” (where so many are stuck in sh*t) to the epiphany of minds meeting in the middle and the treasures to be found there. We may fundamentally disagree with one another, but if we can at least start our interactions with respect and what we do agree on, then fuel the discussion with empathy and mindful listening, so much can be gained.
As you are aware, with a few minor adjustments I could substitute the word “Obama” or “Hillary” for “Trump” throughout this entire piece and it would pretty accurately recount my own political feelings. What I find so transcendent about your essay is that it moves through both sides of those differences and depicts (through your own history) how entering the middle ground of respect, tolerance, and empathy can in turn spur us all to become better people who can help make the world a better place. You have embraced that epiphany and done so much good as a result–not just through what you do for others, but also in how you document the journey of your own growth so that we can learn from it.
I have reflected recently that in such an unprecedented and challenging situation, it is a visceral need for all of us to have someone we can “blame” and be angry at. If we do not, then we must admit that the situation we are in is even more dire and less resolvable, which in turn escalates our fear. So we take refuge in anger and blame. I appreciate that ALL the public figures, whether I support them or not, have willingly donned that mantle (the one with a big target on the back). It takes a toll on any person and whether I agree with them or not, they deserve some respect for that.
In this piece, you have transcended blame and recognized that the key element of any challenge, any problem, any person we cannot stand, is how we can use that situation to make things better. I struggle daily with admitting that my greatest foes are the catalysts for my best contributions. What if I were to meet them in the afterlife. . . would I have the courage to say thank you?
Lovely post, Anne, I am grateful for your presence in my blog and life, you also teach that people on the other side are just as nice and thoughtful as I would like to be..thanks.
I watched a documentary last night on the primatologist, Dr. Jane Goodall, someone I admire. What you wrote today reminds me of something she said. She admitted that animal rights groups sometimes became angry with her because she met with the very people who hurt chimpanzees, such as foresters who destroyed habitat and research facilities who used chimps for experimentation. Her answer was – how can you expect to persuade people to your way of thinking if you won’t even sit down with them to have a civil conversation. Not her exact words but that was the gist. This reminded me of the governors who have faced protesters demanding to reopen the economies. Jane has accomplished much over the years with her determination and civility. As you suggested, a little empathy goes a long way – maybe our politicians should try it.
Donald Trump teaches me nothing, WATCHING Donald Trump’s abhorrent ways may teach me something.
Good. Whatever works for you, Susan..
I truly appreciate what you are saying. And intellectually I’m right with you. However, so far, my emotional self is not there. I just don’t get it. I want to understand, but I don’t. For example, I have a Facebook “friend” who was a traveler RN from Indiana. I worked with her in the NICU in California. Good nurse, and nice person to work with. It turns out she is now not only an anti vaxxer, but she was out with the protesters in Indiana saying her freedoms were being infringed on by the current rules to keep the coronavirus from spreading. She also says in her Facebook posts that sunshine will keep her well. She is posting things about “the deep state” and that Bill Gates is trying to control the world by offering vaccines to impoverished nations. It goes on. I am trying to understand, but I just don’t get it. And I find it upsetting. I haven’t unfriended her because I want to understand. I once asked her a question as to why she was opposed to a vaccine that could keep millions from getting sick and tens of thousands from dying. She responded she wouldn’t be opposed if the vaccines were safe and didn’t contain additives which she believes are dangerous. I think of all the serious diseases that no longer plague us here in this country because of vaccines, and, once again, I don’t understand. And it upsets me, because others will suffer because of ignorance like this.
I like your blog, and thank you for allowing me the opportunity to respond to this. I want to be like you, but so far I can’t.
https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9ncmVlbnNtb290aGllZ2lybC5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0Lw&episode=aHR0cHM6Ly9ncmVlbnNtb290aGllZ2lybC5jb20vP3Bvc3RfdHlwZT1nc2dfeWh2bF9wb2RjYXN0JnA9MTMxMDc3&hl=en&ved=2ahUKEwi3upyP1__oAhVRlnIEHcZdAQgQieUEegQICxAE&ep=6
You might be interested in this podcast on Covid-19 by a virologist who has a different opinion of Dr. Fauci
Not something I need to read, Margot, I don’t want to delve into the fray…
I’m with Sandra. My head and my faith “tell me” that you are right, but I cannot feel myself there. ~~ This is so difficult. It makes me weep to think of giving up my righteous anger, but I long for peace. As I read through your blog I occasionally recoil feeling “NO WAY!”……but I keep coming back because I think you are on to something. How long did it take for you to come to this place in the middle?
Very understandable Diane, thanks for your note. I don’t tell other people what to do, you have to figure things out for yourself. I just explain what I do. What works for me does not necessarily work for you. My own idea about spiritual life is that it is a direction, a path..I know I will never get there, but trying grounds me and keeps me together…It’s a goal, never easy and never simple. We talk a lot about love and empathy, but very few of us really want to practice it..Usually, we empathisize with the people we like..the real challenge for me is to feel for the people I don’t like..And I’m not looking for sainthood, I have lots of anger and judgment in me…Anger seems a more natural default position..
Reading the comments and your responses is almost as enlightening as reading your piece. Thanks for this!
I also would like to understand, be empathetic and listen carefully to Trump supporters, to gain enough insight about them so that we can get to the root of the problem in order to fix it. But so many of his supporters don’t possess the facts, or they blindly dismiss the facts, and continue to forcefully spout inaccuracies and misinformation, and to repeat Trump’s lies as gospel. This I see as willful ignorance and laziness. I’m flummoxed. I am normally a very caring and empathetic person, but this is more than I can understand.
I ,too, find it difficult to learn anything positive from our current President. As Jon said several blogs ago, ‘There is something very broken in this man.” However, what I do take away from this 3 1/2 year long nightmare is: it is not enough to merely vote on Election Day. In 2016, I thought all I had to do was vote and everything would turn out to my liking. What I have learned is that our election process is the backbone of our country and it is what makes our country so great. Only a fraction of people exercise this extremely special privilege. People need to get involved in their local, state, and national elections. As a result of the 2016 Presidential election I began volunteering, in 2019, to assist people who wanted to register to vote. A friend and I took a training class and , before the virus struck, we spent our weekends registering citizens who lived in low-income neighborhoods. This is also a group of our society who feels left behind: some have never voted and are afraid of what would happen if they appeared at a poll with the intention to vote. When it’s safe to go out we will be back on the streets helping people with the paperwork to request vote-by-mail ballots. My newfound volunteerism is a direct result of the Trump presidency. I guess I can thank him for that!!