It’s Not Okay and There’s Nothing You Can Do About It

A hard but essential lesson for surviving the current chaos

“Oh, you only fight the fights you can win? You fight the fights that need fighting!”

— A.J. MacInerney, The American President

“Who says life is fair, where is that written?”

— William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

— Reinhold Niebuhr, The Serenity Prayer

So… last week the President suggested people should inject themselves with disinfectant to fight COVID 19.

This is just one of the latest pieces of abject insanity that can cause a reasonable, rational human being to question the very nature of his/her reality.

Is this real life?

Is this really happening?

Yep. It sure is.

Is this acceptable?

No.

Are we justified in being angry about it?

Yes.

Is there anything we can do about it?

No.

Now I know some of you are thinking, “Yes, there is — we can vote this jackass out of office in November.” And you are right, we can certainly do that. But in the meantime, we are exerting a lot of energy being mad about something we cannot change.

Others might be thinking, “Yes, there is — we can continue to point out the insanity and show that it makes us mad and make sure everyone knows that it is not okay.” You are also correct, however I have begun to doubt that this is an effective strategy, as the people who most need to hear this message are the ones least likely to listen to it.

I am not a religious man, but I have been thinking about Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer a lot recently. Because I have witnessed myself and everyone around me spend a lot of time and energy being upset about things that we have no power to impact, and I am acutely aware that this isn’t getting us anywhere.

I included the prayer at the beginning of this article, but first presented quotes representing the struggle so many of us are facing. Do we fight the fights that are worth fighting even when we know we can’t win, or do we acknowledge that sometimes life just isn’t fair and reserve our energies for the fights we hav a chance of winning?

Just when I thought we were in the home stretch, and my biggest challenge was surviving all of the election nonsense until November when surely President Dumpster Fire would be voted out, COVID-19 brought a new surge in the onslaught of bad news. You cannot get away from the constant stream of content focused on this huge terrible thing that we cannot hope to make better with thoughts and prayers.

The Trump Administration and the Republican Party are running rampant and showing their true colors even more than before the crisis. None of our systems seem capable of handling this pandemic without significant losses. The idiots are coming out of the woodwork and showing just how stupid humanity can be. In short, it is far too easy to find things to be really, really upset about.

But what’s the point?

The stupid and/or selfish people out there aren’t going to suddenly change their very nature because the stakes are higher. And all we are doing is risking our own mental and emotional health and well-being by constantly letting ourselves be upset by it.

My advice to myself and to anyone else who wants to listen is simple:

• Pay attention.
• Acknowledge the things that you don’t agree with and confirm for yourself why you think they are wrong.
• Consider lessons to be learned and what you can do in the future to positively impact the issue.
• Have conversations with anyone willing to talk about these things to confirm their agreement or seek out alternate perspectives.
• Recognize when your own musings or when conversations with others are circling back to the same topics and ideas over and over again.
• When you identify this circling, distract yourself with another topic or task, preferably one that brings you a sense of control, productivity, catharsis, relaxation, or happiness.
• Rinse and repeat as necessary.

It is a scary, strange, and frustrating time, and we are right to be feeling these feelings. But there is no reason to run ourselves into the ground over the things we know are not going to change despite all of our righteous indignation, and we do no one any good by being angry and upset perpetually.

We must at times be comfortable with the idea that there are things in this world that are not okay, and the fact that we can see they are not okay does not mean that we have any power to make them better in any meaningful way.