Last week I got to be part of an amazing conversation with Paula Fontenelle and Stacey Freedenthal. Paula and Stacey are experts in suicide prevention, postvention, and treatment. You can easily find them and some of their great work online using your favorite search engine. They both have books out. Paula’s is: Understanding Suicide and Stacey’s is: Helping the Suicidal Person.
Paula invited Stacey and I onto her podcast (which is also a video production). We all sat in separate rooms in three different states (Oregon, Colorado, and Montana) and talked about, “How on earth” it could be that pandemic-related mental health stress and distress is up (the research says so), and yet suicide rates in 2020 dipped, for the first time in two decades? What a great question!
Between the three of us, we had many answers. That’s good, because death by suicide is always influenced by many factors (in the scientific world, we like to say that suicide is multi-determined). Our answers are speculative, but I think it’s good to be speculative, as long as you admit to the fact that you’re being speculative.
The most fascinating of many fascinating explanations for the recent reduction in suicide rates was our “in real time” discovery that the pandemic relief checks went out in April of 2020. That was important because, year-after-year, the CDC reports that April is nearly ALWAYS the month with the highest suicide rates and in 2020, it was the LOWEST. Why is April always linked to high suicide rates? No one knows for sure, but Paula, Stacey, and I talk about potential explanations for that too. As T. S. Eliot wrote:
“April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.”
If you’re interested in suicide-related phenomena—not everyone is—you should listen or watch Paula’s “Understand Suicide” podcast. You can watch any of the episodes for great info, but for our episode, here are the links.
I was just now finishing up the Moodle (not Poodle) shell for my upcoming Happiness class. While working, I noticed one more person added into the course. . . so there’s still time . . . and I know some of you have been thinking about it.
Whether you take my class or not, you should consider some form of a happiness intervention with yourself. I’m not saying that because I promote toxic positivity. Instead, although I think we should all explore our pain and deepen our understanding of ourselves, we also need tools that will help us feel better on a daily basis and more tools to help us make sure we’re pointed in a direction likely to create meaningful lives.
This leads me to some highlights from happiness class research.
In a small study of 23 undergraduates in a traditional, face-to-face psychology course format, “students reported gains in hope, self-actualization, well-being, agency, and pathway hopefulness, purpose, and mission in life” (Maybury, 2013, p. 62). Note: there was no control group in this study.
In a small study of 18 undergraduates (and 20 control participants who took a social psychology course) in traditional, face-to-face psychology course formats, “the positive psychology students reported higher overall happiness, life satisfaction, routes to happiness, and lower depressive symptoms and stress compared to students in the control course” (Goodmon et al., 2016, p. 232)
In a series of three studies conducted during a COVID-19 lockdown in the U.K., the researchers reported (a) undergraduates in a happiness course had higher mental well-being than a waiting list control; (b) during lockdown, the happiness course did not have significantly positive effects, but participants seemed somewhat buffered from negative effects because they had higher subjective well-being than a control group; (c) a short (4 week), online version of the course used with “university staff and students produced significant benefits across a range of mental and personal well-being measures” (Hood et al., 2021, p. 11). Note: there was no control group in the third study.
In a series of three large studies (n = 500+ for each) of massive open online courses (MOOCs), adult students reported significantly higher subjective well-being than students in an alternative introductory psychology MOOC (Yaden et al., 2021).
We’ve now—at the University of Montana—have collected data on three of our own happiness interventions (one 2.5-hour workshop and two full-semester courses). We have, or will soon, submit these for publication. Our outcomes included:
Study 1 (a 2.5-hour happiness workshop): We had an immediate statistically significant effect on depression symptoms in our workshop group (n = 28) as compared to the waiting list control group (n = 17). At six-months follow-up, over 60% of the workshop participants reported they were still feeling the benefits from the workshop.
Study 2 (Spring 2020 class; half face-to-face and half online, due to COVID-19): We had several positive outcomes for our happiness class members (n = 38) as compared to an alternative course control group (n = 41). Positive outcomes included: (a) greater perceived friendship support, (b) greater hope, (c) fewer/less intense negative emotions, (d) better total health, including better sleep and fewer headaches, and (e) slightly improved mindfulness.
Study 3 (Spring 2021 class; all online): Again, we had several positive outcomes for our happiness class members (n = 36) as compared to an alternative course control group (n = 34). This time, the positive outcomes included: (a) fewer/less intense negative emotions, (b) higher positive emotions, (c) increased hope on both agency and pathways subscales, as well as total hope, and (d) slight increases in perceived friendship support. Unfortunately, we forgot to include the physical health questionnaire.
*In closing, I should mention that I used anthropomorphizing language in this blog’s title. Rest assured, I realize that “research” as a non-sentient activity, is unable to speak, and so if I were to be perfectly honest, I’d say something like “Research says nothing about happiness classes, because research cannot speak.” The reason for my wanton anthropomorphizing is that I’ve noticed this sort of linguistic error in many popular articles that get lots of attention. . . and obviously, I’m trying to attract attention here.
“Never work just for money or for power. They won’t save your soul or help you sleep at night.” – Marian Wright Edelman
Recently, I was struck by the concept of influencer. As far as I can tell, influencers are all about working for money and power; maybe most of all, they’re working for attention.
Today on NPR, I listened to a woman talk about vision boards. I won’t mention her name. She said lots of influencers are using vision boards. Vision boards are all about envisioning what you want to get it to manifest. Other than the fact that vision boards are extremely self-centered, I’ll keep my comments about vision boards out of this blog. I wasn’t surprised that influencers are using all the woo-woo powers they can to get what they want. Okay. I know. I’ll stop talking about vision boards and influencers.
Or maybe not. At least I should acknowledge that all this is terribly Adlerian. When people don’t feel useful, or as if they belong, they can get overly preoccupied with attention, power/money, and revenge. I’m sure Adler would have had something to say about vision boards, had they been around in the early-to-mid 1900s.
Of course, I’m jealous of influencers. Beginning in high school, I had a wish to be featured, as a professional football player, on a United Way advertising. At the time, the NFL and the United Way had a collaborative thing going and I loved the idea of promoting the United Way from a place of power and influence. Of course, my football-playing days ended in 1979, but my fantasies of being able to reach people with the message that mostly we should focus on helping each other still deeply resonates in my soul. It’s too bad so many influencers are all about superficial qualities like fashion and appearance.
I do have tiny bits of influence here and there and I hope I try to wield that influence in ways consistent with my initial wishes to be in one of those old United Way adverts.
For this week and next week, you’ll likely see my pathetic efforts to be an influencer. I want people to enroll in our Art & Science of Happiness course at the University of Montana. I believe engaging in the class can make people not only feel happier, but also begin experiencing less depression and more engagement in meaningful lives. Here are a few comments from previous course participants.
From a young man who described himself as depressed: “After a couple of weeks of participating and attending class I noticed that the slides and the activities really helped me out. I was able to finally have someone explain what feelings I was going through, why I felt this way, and what we could possibly do to improve. At first, I didn’t think any of this was going to work, but after trying meditating and positive thinking I noticed my overall mood was changing.”
From a young woman who really loved savoring: “One of the most influential activities for me was the activity on savoring. I found that mutual reminiscing had a really positive effect on me. After mutual reminiscing with my friends, I gained a lot of gratitude and appreciation for my friends and the experiences I have had in my life. This activity had a really positive influence on me and is something that I plan to try and do often after leaving this class.”
From a young woman with plans to be a teacher: “This semester of the happiness class has been really wonderful for me. I have two big take-aways. The first applies to my personal life. In class, we learned about how to build new habits, something that has helped me to progress this semester. The second take-away relates to my career. I am pursuing life as a teacher, and being in this class helped me expand my ideas about what we can teach.”
From a young man missing his family during a lockdown: “COVID-19 pandemic changed many things in my life. It changed how I was learning and prevented me from joining my family during Ramadan. But, looking at my situation: I am isolating partly to protect my health and mainly for other peoples’ health. And that is one of the pillars for being happy when you believe that others matter.”
From a 30-something woman who likened the course as a trip down the Yellow Brick Road: “I have grown as a person that was made all the more valuable because I was able to do it with the help of so many. I deeply appreciate the people I came to know through this process. This class will only help people as it gives us the knowledge and skills to appreciate ourselves and the others in our life as we gain a better understanding of what true happiness looks like.”
This last testimonial reminds me of something I said last year. That is, you should consider signing up for happiness class with a friend. Or maybe not. Because if you don’t sign up with a friend, you’re likely to leave with one.
Here’s are the deets on the class and how to enroll:
When
The course is offered “live” on Tuesdays/Thursdays from 1pm to 2:20pm, beginning on January 18, 2022, ending the week of May 9, 2022. However, because the course is fully online via Zoom, you can also take the course asynchronously.
If 2021 was the year of the Big Lie, given humanity’s tendency to swing like a pendulum, 2022 should be the Year of the Big Truth. That sounds nice. Let’s embrace truth and facts. Let’s not embrace Kellyanne Conway’s philosophy of alternative facts. But things don’t just happen. We have to make it happen. We need to, as Jean Luc Picard (aka Patrick Stewart) used to say, “Make it so.”
I’ll start.
Below I’ve made a list about what’s mostly true and mostly indisputable about the novel coronavirus (AKA COVID-19, and its variants).
There really is a virus that was identified and labelled as COVID-19. As is often the case with complicated things, the precise origins of COVID-19 are not known, and are likely unknowable. If you go online and read of someone claiming that COVID-19 was developed in a Chinese laboratory, unless you’re reading a legitimate and documented confession from someone directly involved in creating COVID-19, you’re reading something that somebody just made up. Not knowing all the facts is difficult to live with, and in the space of uncertainty, many people will make up stories. The stories might be an effort to explain something (e.g., because I can see the horizon, the earth is flat) or it may be to intentionally deceive. We have to live with the truth that there are things we do not know, including the exact origin story of COVID-19. To avoid conspiracy theories and behave like mature adults who want to contribute to the well-being of society, we should not, in the elegant words of Dr. Cordelia Fine, make shit up.
COVID-19 and its variants are highly transmissible. Our neighbors just informed us they “have the flu.” That may or may not be the perfect truth. They may have COVID. Either way—flu or COVID—I’m keeping my distance. The COVID-19 virus is virulent, and the flu sucks. You can argue the specifics, but COVID-19 is a remarkably transmissible virus.
Upon contracting COVID-19, you may have very minimal and possibly zero COVID symptoms. Some people—even people over 80 and with significant health issues—have had no noticeable COVID symptoms at all. Maybe their test was a false positive? Or, maybe their individualized response was negligible? My father, age 95, bedridden, with a variety of heart and lung ailments, is healthier now—after having tested positive for COVID-19.
In contrast to my father and other luckier victims of the viral vector, COVID-19 makes other people moderately ill, gets others very ill, and kills the rest. COVID-19 killed my mother and several other people I know. Recently, Rita talked with someone who had seven family members die from COVID. The hard truth is that individuals have highly variable responses to a COVID-19 infection; it’s a hard truth because Americans and other humans don’t do well with variability. We like things to be simple and predictable. On average, the vast majority of people infected by COVID are not terribly ill. On the other hand, with about 824,000 Americans dead over a 24-month period, COVID-19 may be unpredictable, but it’s also consistently lethal.
Despite famous people who famously minimized COVID-19, saying it would magically go away, it hasn’t. COVID-19 has proven itself to be very persistent. Sure, the media loves a hot crisis and COVID-19 feeds the media’s need for constant crisis, but COVID’s persistence is not simply media hype.
Although it’s good to be skeptical, the preponderance of the evidence points to the likelihood that COVID-19 death estimates are just as likely to be underestimates as overestimates. Some COVID-minimizers question the death rate estimates from COVID-19, thinking they’re inflated. But there’s also evidence they’re deflated. Other minimizers argue that many COVID-related deaths have occurred in nursing home patients who, like my mother, would have died anyway, in the next year or two. Given all the other evidence pointing to COVID-19 as a legitimate medical crisis, questioning death rate estimates and quibbling over who’s dying is mostly a method to avoid thinking about 824,000 dead Americans and 5.44 million deaths worldwide.
Whether you “believe” in the transmissibility, lethality, or death rates is up to you. We should all try to remember that personal beliefs are not facts; in “fact,” thinking our personal beliefs are facts is the root of many problems. To be intellectually honest means, at least in part, that we don’t go out looking only for evidence to support our pre-existing beliefs. If we do, that’s called confirmation bias. . . which is just fancy scientific terminology for getting good at lying to ourselves.
Speaking of lying, to describe COVID-19 as a “mild flu” is simply untrue. Not only is the mild flu rhetoric a lie, it’s a big lie that can and does cost people their lives. If you’ve spent any time working, volunteering, or hanging out in medical settings, you can see with your own eyes that COVID-19 is having an immense, dreadful, and potentially catastrophic effect on the healthcare systems and healthcare workers around the world.
Medical journals and medical authorities have the best information available about COVID-19. Although their information isn’t perfect, and it’s consistently changing, legitimate medical professionals still give us the best information we have. People who write medical journal articles and people with medical degrees are way smarter than most of the rest of us. If you’re REALLY SERIOUS about “researching COVID-19,” you should read medical journal articles. It’s just as easy to Google the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, the British Medical Journal, and other top-tier medical journals, as it is to Google fringe conspiracy theorists who make up shit from their own demented imaginations. Seriously. The Big Truth Here: You should trust physicians who have taken the Hippocratic oath over COVID-19 deniers and conspiracy theorists who’s only oath is to do whatever they can to get attention and feel more important than they really are.
COVID-19 minimizers or deniers do not have your best interests at heart. Believe them at your own risk. Or, better yet, choose to not believe them. If you’re the sort of skeptic who looks for cracks in the arguments of legitimate medical research, be sure to use equal rigor to look for cracks in the arguments of people like Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Laura Schlessinger. Take a minute to contemplate who you think is more interested in your (and all Americans’) well-being. Take another minute to contemplate who you think has underlying financial motivations to deceive you. In the end, the CDC, Dr. Fauci, and the World Health Organization are better sources of useful, health-promoting information than COVID-minimizers or deniers.
I’ve written all this and just now realizing I haven’t even gotten to the issues of wearing masks and vaccinations. Obviously, there’s more to come.
Please join me in working to make 2022, The Year of the Big Truth.
Montana Happiness Project – 2021 – Year End Report
Despite global exhaustion from wave after wave of the coronavirus pandemic, and despite immense national and local loss and suffering, amazing examples of resilience continue. At the Montana Happiness Project, we believe in facing, validating, and working through individual and collective pain and suffering. We believe everyone needs time and space to be with, and gain insight from, their emotions. This is one side of the truth of living.
On the other side is the need to stay strong, positive, and resilient. Although it’s human nature and therapeutic for individuals and communities to be with their emotions, we also benefit from focusing on strengths, positivity, gratitude, and kindness. In an ideal world, we do both. We take time to be with our painful emotions and learn from them. We also intentionally turn toward wellness and happiness. This is part of the balance that facilitates well-lived lives.
The year 2021 remained challenging for many Montanans. This brief Year-End Report describes activities associated with the smaller and larger ways in which the Montana Happiness Project made efforts to nurture wellness within our Montana communities. To summarize our activities, we’ve organized this report into several sections: (a) Happiness Funding, (b) Bimonthly Activities, (c) 2022 Goals and Organizing Principles, (d) Outcomes, and (d) Gratitude.
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Just in case you don’t want to read the whole 7 page report, I’ve pasted the Executive Summary below.
In our first complete year of operations, the Montana Happiness Project, L.L.C. provided substantial contributions to wellness awareness and happiness promotion throughout the state of Montana and beyond. Highlights of 2021 include: (a) reaching well over 1,000 Montanans with high-quality educational presentations on suicide prevention and happiness promotion; (b) offering seminars, classes, and trainings viewed by over 50,000 professionals around the globe; (c) delivery of a 2½ day retreat for 15 professionals committed to implementing a strengths-based approach to suicide assessment, treatment, and prevention in Montana; (d) data collection and continued scientific research on the effectiveness of strengths-based suicide assessment and treatment workshops for professionals, happiness classes, and happiness workshops; (e) initiation of collaborative programming with the University of Montana, Families First Learning Labs, and other community organizations.
If you’d like to read the whole report, send me an email (john.sf@mso.umt.edu) or message me here and I’ll get one out to you.
For the past ten days I’ve been contemplating a witty and profound holiday greeting and blog post that would lift moods everywhere and inspire greater wellness. Sadly (or happily), the profound words did not emerge from my brain, perhaps because my brain–like many objects at this time of the season–preferred to remain at rest. The universe seemed to be saying something like, “Let there be inertia.” Who am I to dispute messages from the universe?
And then, in the midst of my stare-down with inertia, I read that today is Day 2 of Kwanzaa, the principle for which is “self-determination.” I don’t know much about Kwanzaa, and so I did a bit of reading and discovered that Day 2 involves the lighting of a candle that represents the principle of Kujichagulia (aka self-determination). Self-determination can be taken a few different ways, including the process of defining, creating, naming, and speaking for ourselves.
I have no intention of engaging in cultural appropriation here, but instead, my desire (in a Bertrand Russell sort of way) is to continue to embrace new learning—which seems to me as a nice antidote to staying at rest or remaining inert. Learning a bit more about African-American culture . . . as well as other cultures . . . strikes me as a good thing, and is consistent with what I hope for in the coming year.
In my momentarily state of naïve idealization (unfortunately, this too shall likely pass), I wish you all the best for Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and other celebratory holidays. I also wish for more learning, more openness to the ideas and cultures of others, and more of that social fabric that Alfred Adler called Gemeinschaftsgefühl. And, to paraphrase the great positive psychologist, Chris Peterson, remember, “Other people matter,” which, of course, means that because you’re an “other” person to everyone else, you matter too.
Often, I have the honor of getting a personal preview of Rita S-F’s Godblogs. I sit in a cushy chair, shut my eyes, and let her words create images in my brain. It’s not unusual for her readings to stimulate unusual thoughts. But, last week, while listening, I was taken with a particular epiphany.
She was reading about how easy (and destructive) it is to be judgmental; I can’t recall the details. In response, a voice in my head spoke gently,
“I wonder if it might help if you could try, just a little, to be even more judgmental. . .” followed by an additional internal commentary “. . . said no one ever.”
The thought—of trying to be even more judgmental—made my lips curl upward into a smile. I felt an urge to laugh. Then, naturally, I thought of Viktor Frankl.
As I wrote in my last blog (https://johnsommersflanagan.com/2021/12/06/paradoxical-intention-dont-try-this-at-home-or-maybe-dont-try-it-anywhere/), Frankl was the first person I know of who explicitly discussed paradoxical intention as working like a joke to the psyche. I’ve written about that, but I’d never felt it in my gut. This time I did actually feel it. Then, and in response to the thought of intending to be “even more judgmental,” along with the urge to laugh, I also felt a small internal push back toward acceptance.
Paradoxical intention has two parts. First, there’s the intention. I’ve tried the intention part of paradoxical intention with myself (and used it with clients) in specific situations when physical behaviors or responses feel outside of voluntary control. One example is the twitching eye syndrome. If you have an eye that’s prone to twitching, you can try to make it twitch more or try to make it twitch when it hasn’t been twitching. That’s the intention part. The other part is for the intention to be aimed toward the opposite of your goal. In the case of listening to Rita’s blog, the thought of intending to be more judgmental was received and then produced psychological push-back. What was different than any other response I’ve ever felt about paradoxical intention was my urge to smile and laugh. I’d never felt like laughing when I tried to make a bothersome eye twitch . . . twitch more.
Later—while driving I-90 west—a place where I’m prone to feeling intermittent anger toward drivers I label in my mind as “stupid,” I did another experiment.
“I wonder,” I thought to myself, “if maybe I could try to start feeling just a little angrier toward those other drivers. Being alone in the car, I tried it out with a brief litany of profanity. In response, I felt increased anger. That wasn’t good. But within seconds, my brain started the natural push-back. I took note of my greater anger and quickly judged it as unpleasant. Then, I noticed an internal psychological push-back toward the center. I suddenly wanted the anger—which usually feels so justified in the moment—to go away. And so, I let it go.
Paradoxical intention isn’t a magic trick. Nothing in the world of human psychology is magical. Paradoxical intention operates on natural psychological dynamics. Laura and Fritz Perls would have called it an internal polarity. Behaviorists like to call it a form of overcorrection. The popular press tends to reduce it to a term I can’t help but find offensive: reverse psychology.
Although you might try paradoxical intention on your children or your friends, because of one central underlying principle, that’s not a great idea. The underlying principle is best expressed by an old (and bad) joke.
“How many mental health professionals does it take to change a light bulb?”
“Only one. But the light bulb has to want to change.”
You could try a little paradoxical intention . . . on yourself . . . but only if you want to experience a new transformative epiphany.
After facing an overwhelming number of choices on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, now we’re faced with another litany of excellent choices for Giving Tuesday. There are so many wonderful charities to support. You can’t go wrong with supporting food banks, shelters, and other organizations that push back against poverty. You also can’t go wrong supporting children, minorities, education, and the environment . . . these are all huge needs.
Along with the preceding charity types, this year Rita and I are wholeheartedly supporting college student mental health. We’ve seen the struggles firsthand and we believe college students can benefit from greater access to mental health services. Specifically, we’re supporting a University of Montana Foundation project called “The University of Montana Mental Health and Happiness Fund.” We see the University of Montana Mental Health and Happiness Fund as a win-win-win. Here’s why.
The first win is that the funds will go to provide more hours of mental health counseling for college students. Unfortunately, more than ever before, college students are stressed and experiencing mental health struggles. These struggles can include suicidal thoughts and behaviors. As far as age groups vulnerable to death by suicide, the college student age group is among the highest (along with older males). Supporting college student mental health can literally save lives and help college students graduate and become significant contributors to their communities. Currently, Counseling Services at the University of Montana needs more counselors to meet increased needs.
The second win is about “workforce development.” In Montana, and around the nation, we need a continuous flow of competent and capable mental health professionals. That’s why the first priority of the University of Montana Mental Health and Happiness Fund is to support a ½ time Counseling Intern for UM’s Counseling Services department. Funding an intern means that the intern gains valuable experience and supervision and can then go out and contribute to mental health in the community. If we receive more funds than expected, we will either fund a second ½ time counseling intern or we will fund happiness promotion projects at UM and within the Western Montana area.
The third win is basic economics. College students contribute to local economies. When they graduate, college students also create capital. College students become entrepreneurs, scientists, grant writers, community leaders, parents, and grandparents. In all these roles, college graduates will do better and be better if they have better mental health.
Our 2021 fundraising goal is $45,000. We’ve already raised over $22,000. Please help us reach our goal so we can contribute to positive mental health and happiness at the University of Montana.
If you’re interested in joining Rita and me in supporting the University of Montana Mental Health and Happiness fund here are the instructions.
Sometimes when I’m talking about feminism in my theories class, I refer to it as the F-word. I feel like I have to do more “selling” of feminist therapy than any other approach. Maybe I’m just imagining it, but I hear rumors like, “I hope we get to skip feminist therapy in the lab” and “How do you practice feminist therapy?”
The answers are: “No, you don’t get to skip feminist therapy” and “Because feminist therapy is technically eclectic, you can practice it nearly any which way you like.” Freedom is another F-word, and there’s plenty of that when you’re being afeminist.
Yesterday, while facilitating a grad lab where the practicing happens, it was fascinating to observe feminist therapy in 10 minute snippets. I heard a beautiful self-disclosure. I heard talk of clothes and bodies and of the wish to be taken seriously. No one mentioned the patriarchy . . . but everyone . . . hopefully . . . got to taste and talk about oppression and hierarchy and the wish to be a free and expansive self.
Someone even talked about farting. Someone else about dancing. Others about uninhibited delight.
Should you be interested in what prompted these interactions, I’m attaching my feminist lab instructions here:
This morning, being behind not only on my grading, course planning, writing, and housecleaning, I also found myself behind on current events. As a consequence, I was forced (not literally, of course) to do an internet search to understand the meaning of the “Let’s go Brandon” catchphrase or meme or whatever we’re calling such things in our contemporary and ever-changing vernacular.
What I found was—on its face—disturbing. After having won his first NASCAR event, a man named Brandon is being interviewed by an NBC reporter. He looks so young, so happy, and so excited to talk about his first victory. In the background, there is chanting. Although not PERFECTLY clear, if you listen closely and look at the video clip, some in the crowd are shouting, “Fuck Joe Biden.” The reporter, in an effort to weave the chanting into her interview, explicitly interprets the chanting as “Let’s go Brandon!”
At a deeper level, the chants, their interpretation, their re-interpretation, and their current use as a method for mocking and insulting President Biden, represent a deep, sad, and pathetic powerlessness. We all feel it. We all want to shout out our own beliefs, because, of course, we think our own beliefs are the best beliefs and the right beliefs and the beliefs that should be heard above the roar of the crowd.
What saddens me the most is that it also represents not only the deep divisions in our country (and the world), but that it has become viral fodder for confirmation bias and spinning. People see whatever they’re inclined to see in the chant. Is it evidence of fake news or disrespect for the presidency? Have we caught the press intentionally remaking reality or have we caught Trump supporters in their anti-patriotic hypocrisy? The facts don’t matter much anymore. Polarizing is the thing. Sloganizing is the thing. It’s not so much about what unites us; it’s about what divides us.
Like many, I feel a paradox. I care about the deep divisions. I wish I could bridge them. At the same time, I don’t care for people stoking deep divisions. I wish to ignore them.
All this brings me to something that I unequivocally and unapologetically wish would go viral . . . instead of the popular outrage and mockery.
After discovering and lamenting the Let’s Go Brandon mockery, I read Rita Sommers-Flanagan’s Sunday morning blog post. Hers are the messages I wish would catch fire on the internet.
She wrote:
“God,” I whisper, awake and facing morning, “You know I’d like to extend my reach; do things that make me feel important and complete. I’d like to turn the tide of hate into an ocean of love. I’d like to make the fear go away.”
This is the call for unity, love, and peace that SHOULD be in my newsfeed.
Here’s another line: “I am of your doing, and you of mine.” Just spectacular.
Rita’s blog is titled, “Short visits with an honest God.” Should you be interested in deeper unity, here’s the link to her blog: https://godcomesby.com/ . . .
John Sommers-Flanagan 