The question that might change your next step

Oh, it’s bad.

I knew it was bad. I just didn’t realize how bad until that phone call this week.

It was my friend, the pastor, in distress.

She’s not actually my pastor — rather, my lifelong friend who grew up to become a pastor. She’s the one I call when my emotions have me twisted like a pretzel inside an old sock. One of my two emergency buttons.

She always has wise words to calm, to explain, to help me see things in a different way.

So, when she hit me with,“How are we going to get through the next four years?” I realized, truly, just how bad things have become.

Before you jump off in disgust of another political column, may I suggest it’s not. Rather, something you and I are both seeing. Hearing. Overdosing on.

I’m talking about the noise. All the noise. Squawking at us at every turn since the inauguration, or was it Election Day? Or the 20-year presidential campaign?

I just know it’s getting louder. TV, radio, water coolers. Everyone is screaming and thumping their chests. And social media. Goodness, social media.

Remember when the most annoying thing on Facebook was your Cousin Ralph posting a picture of the ham sandwich he had for lunch?

Oh, what I wouldn’t do for a ham sandwich right now. And I don’t even like ham.

Even more, I detest the constant “Nah, nah, nah, nah.” The “Gotchas!” One side catching the other side in a lie. Or a hypocritical remark.

If my wise pastor friend was spent, if it was so bad she was coming to me for answers, I could only go to my final emergency button — the question that gets me back on track when my overwrought emotions, fatigue, or frustrations take the wheel.

I simply ask myself, “What am I trying to achieve here?”

A better world?

Change of policy?

Get my kid to clean her room?

The answer usually cuts my crazy emotions off at the knees.

Energy spent on action, instead of rage.

“What am I trying to achieve?” my pastor friend tried on.

I swear I heard her exhale and her wheels starting to spin.

“That’s your column next week,” she instructed.

So, here I am offering that up.

To you, Dear Reader.

To you, who are beside yourself with this political reality show.

To you, who love this president and are sick of the whining.

To you, whose kid’s room is messier than the one I’m looking at. Though I find that hard to believe.

What are you trying to achieve?

How can you spend your energy doing, not simply raging.

Make this world, your world, better? I’ll suggest that another taunting post on Facebook, or spending too much time scrolling through other posts, is probably not it.

Give your time. Donate. Buy coffee for a stranger. Pet a chicken.

Shoot, run for office.

Counter the noise with the sweet possibility of just how good this all could be.

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