I have been meaning to delete my Co-Star app for some time, but on Wednesday it delivered the stoicism I needed. “You cannot change unalterable forces. But you can change your attitude towards them,” it read. The ancient Roman philosophers of the Stoic school believed that we should always see ourselves as hovering between a free and determined state. Capable of controlling certain events, at the mercy of others. Stoic philosophy has always appealed, but this week it seems more necessary than ever. In the year that we have had, a year filled with uncertainty and fear and dread, of course the U.S. election was going to pan out this way. The Cut’s Bridget Read may have summed it up best when she wrote, “We knew presidential results could take weeks, even months. The uncertainty is torture anyway”.
As I write this, it is likely Joe Biden will win the presidential race, and by the time you read this, it is possible he has. The loss that seems palpable, however, is that part of the world was expecting a landslide. We got ahead of ourselves again. On election night, CNN commentator Van Jones said there is a moral victory and a political victory in elections and they’re not the same thing. “I think a lot of Democrats are hurt tonight,” he said. “The political victory still may come… [but] for people who have seen this wave of intolerance, they wanted a moral victory tonight. We wanted to see a repudiation of this direction for the country and the fact that it’s this close, it hurts. It just hurts.”
I feel like unmet expectations are not so different to failure. Failure is real, while unmet expectations are illusions, tricking us into believing they are real failures at the time. They both increase our sense of disillusionment and challenge our ability to maintain hope. They make us want to give up or close the world out. Which brings me to Joan Didion. In her 1975 commencement speech at The University of California, Riverside, the writer encouraged the graduating class to remain engaged with the world around them; to not let the disillusionment beat them. “What I want to tell you today is not to move into that world where you’re alone with yourself and your mantra and your fitness program or whatever it is that you might use to try to control the world by closing it out,” she said. “I want to tell you just to live in the mess. Throw yourself out into the convulsions of the world.”
Life is unpredictable and messy and unfair. The wins cannot always be predicted, no matter what the polls say. This reality doesn’t refute hard work or hope. Hard work and hope are necessary parts of the package, as is an existence that is both in the world and of the world. To walk through our days knowing that we’re hovering between a free and determined state, is to live. To maintain hope throughout these days is, perhaps, to live well. As Didion said: “If you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that’s what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.” This week, we need all the luck we can muster.
Some related (and unrelated) recommendations:
Obviously, this article by Bridget Read on The Cut about the election and this long, painful week.
These two podcast episodes from The Daily which provide a decent overview: one on the unfinished election, the other on Joe Biden's lead.
This New Yorker article on Trump's attacks on the "rigged election".
AOC's Vanity Fair cover story on what her next four years will look like.
Van Jones' monologue on why this election result still hurts.
I've been listening to The Slow Rush by Tame Impala all week.
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