From “We Become What We Normalize: What We Owe Each Other in Worlds That Demand Our Silence” by David Dark
We demonize people when we feel powerless. We demonize when we don’t know what to do with our own despair. But mad, we noted, is ever a form of sad, and our channels for engaging despair thoughtfully can’t be controlled by nor are they dependent upon any elected official. We can make our own moments of pause together with others whenever we like. We resolved not to let the more-than-daily outbursts of that most famously insecure man dictate our emotional lives or the way we would address one another. Trump’s mental chaos, his best-selling toxic understanding of himself and others, need not, we noted, become our own because we get to choose what we take in. And as we have to do with anyone who would try to reduce the whole world to the size of their own fear, we can respond with thoughtfulness at every turn. We can make of our own speech, our actions, and our thinking a neighborhood expression of care.