Pride, War, and the State of the World: There is no bow right now
Convo with my husband this week:
Me: Got anything interesting on your mind lately?
Him: Why?
Me: I’m supposed to be blogging this Saturday and can’t think of anything that might make a good story. I mean it’s pride month and we might be entering a world war. So, I guess there’s plenty to talk about. But, it’s all so depressing!
I like to write about things that I can tie up with a nice little bow. Sure, I like to write about problems – but usually only if they have a nice way to tie them up or solve them. This post has no bow.
How do you write about pride month at a time when what is supposed to be a celebration is being tainted by politics?
A few recent headlines from major news organizations include:
Big brands are pulling back on Pride merchandise and events this year
Companies Pull Back From Pride Events as Trump Targets D.E.I.
Target Moves Pride Merchandise Aside To Spotlight Father’s Day And July 4th Holidays
Some headlines are a bit more hopeful, but still tainted by the US president’s bigotry. For example:
The LGBT community shows up for WorldPride in D.C., despite some worries about Trump
Instead of celebrating pride month, Trump and his supporters are busy celebrating his bombing of Iran. It makes me sick to my stomach.
At work, we did get some good news last week. I work at a science institute that is mostly all federally funded. Trump had blocked a lot of grant funding for people in my field across the country. Last week a judge blocked Trump’s block of the funding, so people are supposed to be able to resume their work. But that’ll be appealed and there’s still plenty up in the air right now, so it’s not an easy fix to the mess the scientific community is in. There will be no bow for years to come.
Have you ever had a problem that you were clearly in the midst of, but kept trying to convince yourself that you were on the other side of the problem?
Maybe you and your spouse are trying to work through something and you keep trying to convince yourself you’ve worked through it, but really you’ve got a long way to go?
Maybe you experienced some trauma and you keep trying to convince yourself you are emotionally past it, but then you find yourself crying in the checkout line of the grocery store and realize you aren’t there yet?
Maybe you were dealing with addiction (or the addiction of a loved one) and kept trying to convince yourself that the addiction was in the past, but it really wasn’t?
I feel like I do this sometimes.
I feel like my friends do this sometimes.
I feel like my family members do this sometimes.
It’s like we don’t want to admit that the hard problem is still going on.
We’re forcing the bow where there really isn’t a way to put a bow on it yet.
Right now I just want to take a moment to say: As a nation we are in the hard part. We are SOLIDLY in the hard part. And we don’t need to try to convince ourselves that things are getting better. We can just say, “Hey, this sucks. It’s all so depressing.”
And I’m not going to be able to put a nice bow on this post. Can you? How do we end this?
[feature image on this post photo cred: Photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash]
