How to Spend the 5 Days Until the Election
Tips Both Practical and Philosophical
Need a workout? Forgo the high intensity interval training this week and go for an aimless walk in your neighborhood. Leave your air pods at home and, instead, look for golden leaves. Go home and do twenty jumping jacks in your kitchen, then dance around your house singing ridiculous songs like “Brandy, You’re a Fine Girl” and “Baby, I Love Your Way.” Pretend to be LeBron James and throw socks into the washing machine from far away, then cheer for yourself when you make the shot.
If you’re not sure who you’re voting for, spend one day listening only to the words that come out of the candidates’ mouths. For one day, don’t listen to a single word that’s said about the candidates, not one word from friends or family, not one word on a flyer or poster—only the words the candidates themselves say. Write the words down if you can. Look hard at the piece of paper, the words in your own handwriting that can’t be argued with.
Dress up as something silly for Halloween and eat candy corn until your stomach hurts. If you have trick-or-treaters, give out full-size candy bars and tell all the kids their costumes look awesome. Make costume awards out of printer paper and pass them out to your favorite children. Or cook a big pot of chili and invite your neighbors over. Don’t ask them who they’re voting for and give them plenty of cornbread.
Help someone. Make a meal for somebody, or donate some winter coats, or rake your neighbor’s leaves—even (especially?) if they’re voting for the other candidate. Buy local art or bread or vegetables. Go ahead and start making the world you want to live in because no one else is going to do it for you.
Look up from your phone. Break the spell of influence. Interrupt the rhythm of dread and gloom. For a few days, refuse to reward people who stoke fear and say outrageous things. Play a board game inside your house or do something else that can’t be tracked, surveilled, or polled. Give yourself enough of a break that all the outside voices leave your mind. Think about who you’d want to be if you lived in a completely different time and place. Be that person now.
Leave the kids out of it. Resist the urge to indoctrinate them in your way of seeing this election. Resist piling your anxieties and grievances on their little shoulders. Tell them your family will be the same people with the same values on November 6th. Tell them they might see angry people or overhear mean things, but mostly those things are done by people who are afraid. If you have kids in your life, make sure they know love is bigger than fear. Make sure they understand that no matter what happens in the world, some meaningful part of them will always remain beyond others’ control.
If you have to watch or listen to the news (which you don’t), make a game out of listening for the stories behind what you’re being told. Only what happened is a fact; everything else is what someone is making of that fact. When people talk about the election, ruthlessly sift out their intentions and emphases and biases. Hold just the hard kernel of the fact in your hand, and decide what story you think is true about it.
Think now, before votes are counted, about what seems like a crazy election outcome or leadership action you’d never tolerate. Articulate those things to yourself. Maybe even write them down somewhere. Like the way kids grow taller without our noticing the incremental changes, societies can become inured to violent language or actions. If the line of what a society will accept keeps moving, we may end up tolerating more than we meant to. Don’t.
When you go vote, take warm muffins with you. Pass them out to everyone in line. Let the news write a story about that.
Prepare for the long haul. This isn’t going to be over on November 5th, so put something on your calendar for late November that you’re excited about. Schedule a yoga class or a dinner out with friends. Then schedule something in December, too. When it becomes January and everyone is still in a panic, remind yourself that this was always going to happen. Zoom out and pretend you are looking at your life from the perspective of a future historian. Imagine the historian writing something in a future book like, “Almost all of America started fighting with each other, but some people kept on loving.”
Be those people. If the people in a society take care of one another, no leader, no matter how powerful, can make of that society anything other than a society that takes care of one another.
Wise. My daughter is all grown up (and a reporter!) but I cannot imagine what living through this with late elementary or middle school students must be like. Number 10 and 11 particularly resonate.
I also like to reflect on times in the distant past when things were so much worse. For example the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572, part of the French Wars of Religion between Catholics and Protestants. While not technically political violence, it was sparked by a political marriage, with citizens turning on each other and a death toll of between 2,000 - 20,000 or more depending on what sources you look at. We've come a long way since then, actually.
Best suggestions I have heard in a long time!