I am in the half world between sleep and consciousness. It is sweet here. A gentle lull between the tidal pulls of dreamland and the motivation to start a new day. The sun is not yet up, but a pastel wash of color is beginning to seep into the sky, giving shape to the pile of laundry on my floor, the lump of cat by my feet and the still unreadable clock ticking on the wall. I hear my son, Oakley, downstairs, rummaging for his breakfast and the pull towards wakefulness builds. But today, I am not sure I am ready for what I may find when I greet the day. What I will soon hear on the radio or read on my phone. I have been told that I am pathologically optimistic, but today, I am afraid of what might be.
Throughout all my adventures, I have spouted off about the kindness that I have found. I have been welcomed, housed and helped by everyone along the way. From the inviting church ladies in Kentucky that offered their basements for Oakley and I to sleep in when we bicycled across the United States, to the girls in Morocco who grinned and cheered under their head scarves, as I biked my naked-legged self over high mountain passes and little towns, to the police in Uruguay that offered to change my flat tires. Everyone has returned a smile with a smile and often quite a bit more. This is the world that I have been privileged to live in—one in which people are good.
Yesterday morning, when I did climb out of bed and venture downstairs, and did indeed hear the news that I had dreaded, I felt like a fool. All of my naive belief in the power of basic human kindness, as a shared ideology, seemed turned on its head. People are caring for one another, right? Right? I struggled to believe that we, as a country, want this angry, vindictive, disrespectful, caustic, ignorant man to represent us to the world. “This cannot be!” I kept shouting in my head. “He is to full of hatred!” I spent the day going through stages of grief. Am I that out of touch? Have I misjudged the people of this country? Have I been living in a fantasy land?After a bike ride, a family dinner and a fire in the backyard with friends, I have come to a conclusion. I don’t think so.
I am not particularly smart, nor politically savvy. In fact, I have a fairly simplistic view of the world. But, I do know something about the importance of connection. And that with connection, comes compassion. And that with compassion, comes kindness. I have experienced this everyday.
So, maybe all I can do is fight this feeling of despair with more kindness, more acceptance, and more love, even for those that I can’t yet understand. There are probably one too many adages about this, but it is probably because it is true.
That is a fight I can get behind. That is where the hope will lie for me. That is the part of the country that I will represent when I bicycle around Cuba or wherever this February.
I will now get off my soap box and hopefully never return. I will go back to telling stories and hopefully they will speak for themselves.
I love you! 💜