Many people don’t realize how much men – men like me – admired Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I admired her passion and intellect, of course, and her commitment to equality for women. Feminism has liberated me, as well as the women in my life.

I am free to be me, not just someone else’s pre-destined idea of me.

I admired Ginsberg’s husband, Martin, and his wish for her to be as successful as she wanted to be. He was a role model for me when I married Maria. And I admired her ability to love and befriend people like Antonin Scalia, whom she battled fiercely at the Supreme Court. They agreed on little but became fast friends.

In 2016, Ginsburgh recited a handwritten letter that Marty had drafted to her as was dying of cancer. I thought of Maria when I heard her read this letter and wept and wept. It came right out of my own soul.

“My dearest Ruth, you are the only person I have loved in my life,” he wrote.

“And I have admired and loved you almost since the day we met at Cornell some 56 years ago. What a treat it has been to watch your progress to the very top of the legal world.”

I am older than Maria and have written several farewell letters to her in my head, as I suspect I will be the first to leave our great love. Martin Ginsburg’s words are the words I would use, the words in my head, and my heart.

So much for our fractured and disconnected worlds to learn. Can you imagine anyone saying these words to the people who call themselves our leaders?

I often think of this photograph (above) of Ginsburg and Scalia riding on an elephant in India on their trip there together. It reminds me never to hate the people who disagree with me, even if they choose to hate me.

We can’t know one another if we can’t speak to one another. We can’t love someone we don’t know.

Ruth Ginsburg really stirred the pot, dying when she did. She hoped to stay alive to see the next President replace her, but I imagine she would have loved the explosion her death caused in the midst of this election.

If anyone is up there cackling at what happens now, I imagine it is her.

Suddenly, Ginsbirgh, a scrawny Jewish intellectual and freedom fighter, has become a new Joan of Arc to millions of women, young and old. Like Joan herself, she believed that she was chosen to lead an army to freedom.

They would have loved to burn her at the stake, but she was too smart and too tough.

Her death has brought these followers of all ages and colors together, and they are on the march. I believe the wind is at their back; this is their time.

Overnight, Ginsburg’s life drew the most vivid contrast to the cruelty and rage that marks so much of President Trump’s presidency and the angry cheers of some of his followers.

Donald Trump is a powerful presence, but his great and continuous flaw is that he never values anyone who does not love him unconditionally. That causes him to underestimate powerful and important people again and again.

Ruth Ginsburg is what Trump can never be – loved for his ideas and humanity, admired for integrity and empathy. That is almost painfully easy to see right now, the contrast between them is almost blinding, even as he tries to push her life aside.

The way Trump blew past her death and could not even grant her the courtesy of being laid to rest in peace put the light on what a good and empathetic person really is, and how he can’t be either one of those things.

I thought of Ginsburg and Scalia today when I went out to visit the donkeys.

Every time I see the donkeys, which is several times a day, I am struck by their evenness and equanimity.

They are the same. They do not go up and down with the news of the day; they never see the news of the day. Their news of the day is survival,  getting along.

They are deeply spiritual and steady; they inspire calm and reflection. Donkeys meditate for much of the day; they know how to be still and silent and observe the world around them.

Inspired by them and Ginsburg’s good advice for peace of mind, I conducted a media experiment. Since starting my column, “One Man’s Truth” (thanks E.B. White), I have been keeping an eye on the news, and I see that it has damaged me, made me edgier, more anxious, sometimes more frightened.

The more I watched, the more I felt uneasy and disconnected.

Ginsburg and Scalia were rare; the politicians I see on the news from different sides never even speak to one another, let alone become friends and work together. They live in their own bubbles and can’t come out or let anyone else in.

Everywhere I go and look, I see the bonds of humanity fray and break.

An old farmer runs a vegetable cart, and he put up a Trump sign recently, and many people have told me  – and he told me – that many people can no longer in good conscience buy vegetables from him.

Trump supporters have volunteered to demonstrate on his behalf, but he refused their offer. “I sell my vegetables,” he said, “not my politics.” But, I said, surely he must have expected some trouble when he put his sign up.

“I live in America,” he said, “we can still be free here, at least I think so.” And here, we found some common ground. I told him about the nasty messages I get whenever I write about politics, no matter how gentle I want and try to be.

We wished each other luck and shook hands. I took home his vegetables and strawberries; they are innocent pawns in our raging human wars.

Ruth Ginsburg would have loved this spunky farmer, and I think he would have loved her.

My conscience works the other way than the people who boycott this man.

I can no longer in good conscience not buy vegetables from him; he has the right, as I do, to like whichever candidate he chooses. If I want that right, I have to support his right as well. He should not be punished for what he believes.

He is entitled to respect and dignity, as am I. We both insist on it.

This partisanship and intolerance, I believe, is just another pandemic, one of judgment, anger, and self-righteousness.

It is not a simple thing to detach one’s values from the task of being human and finding common ground, which we all have in one way or the other. But it is the task in 2020.

This hatred of the other is not going to be me. My humanity is not going to be a casualty of this. You don’t beat them by being them.

The media are all about judgment and confrontation; everyone I see on the screen is aggrieved, outraged, whining, or furious. That is the point. High ratings follow outrage and verbal violence and grievance.

How can people not pick it up and absorb it internally? The Internet gave grievance and anger to the Perfect Storm for hatred and lies.

Ruth Ginsberg was the very opposite of this.

I started an experiment two or three days ago. I turned on my iPhone at 6:30 a.m. and scanned the headlines – CNN, Fox News, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Atlantic Magazine. I am curious to see which stories are considered the most important, and I scan those that catch my eye.

Then I go about my business and do not look at these sites again until 6 or 7 p.m. Most of the time, I see the same stories I saw in the morning.

But I find that I am not missing any news if I check only twice a day. Hardly anything happens that I needed to know about immediately, and if I miss anything, I can catch up with the next morning or evening.

Again, I owe some of this to Ginsberg, who followed the news, but in a precise and focused way.  Her clerks say she was able to shut out the angry, the irrelevant, and the supercilious.

She had a lot to think about it and was careful about how she used her great mind.

She rejected whining,  fear and complaint. Unlike President Trump, she never felt sorry for herself.

She took life as it came and made the best of it. She was not interested in the “news.” She became a shining symbol of Radical Acceptance. And she never took the bait.

This works. I stay calm and grounded; the news doesn’t get into my head and dance around. My blood pressure and heartbeat are both calm and healthy. I am always reading a new book, and always taking an hour or two to listen to music.

I meditate for 10 to 15 minutes several times a day.

I walk in the woods every day. I walk with dogs every day and visit the donkeys every day and make sure I tell my wife I love her every day. Each of those things is a tonic for me, a spiritual place, all so much better than any pill.

What can I say? This is crazy shit going on right now in so many ways is infectious; if you let it into my head, it will make me crazy too. I am learning that I can be well informed and follow the donkeys’ wisdom and leave plenty of space in my head for my life.

Ruth Ginsburg and others taught me that disagreement is healthy, but being angry and disagreeable is not. The media is a toxin; the more one drinks in, the more poison gets into the system.

Her spirit will guide people of open mind and warm heart to a reckoning in November; I believe it will guide people of compassion to a great victory, even as politicians seek to obliterate her legacy.

Hers is the way; she had no time for the fearful or the timid.

Every defeat was just another opportunity to move forward again.

There is no magic wand. There is no turning back.

I found another benefit from this careful use of my mind.

I am surprised to believe that I sometimes know more than the people sitting in  Washington know because they are too close to see what is in front of them, too remote to see what is far away, too enmeshed with one another, and too suffocated by the pressure and intensity of their lives.

I have some time to think.

It seems that the fewer media I watch, the more I know, and the clearer I can see. How strange.

I always loved reading interviews with Ginsburg; they were so full of humor and wisdom.

Here are three quotes that made a deep impression on me:

“Work for what you believe in, but pick your battles, and don’t burn your bridges. Don’t be afraid to take charge, think about what you want, then do the work, but then enjoy what makes you happy, bring along your crew, have a sense of humor.”

“When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out. Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one’s ability to persuade.”

“Feminism … I think the simplest explanation, and one that captures the idea, is a song that Marlo Thomas sang, ‘Free to be You and Me.’ Free to be, if you were a girl—doctor, lawyer, Indian chief. Anything you want to be. And if you’re a boy, and you like teaching, you like nursing, you would like to have a doll, that’s OK too. That notion that we should each be free to develop our own talents, whatever they may be, and not be held back by artificial barriers—humanmade barriers, certainly not heaven-sent.”