Which box today?

Maybe we all benefited from having no televisions in our rooms, and very few in the hotels, but I spent a week in Yellowstone National Park this fall without hearing a single word about the election. On the tour bus, at the restaurant counter, waiting for Old Faithful to erupt, the conversations were as notable for what they didn’t cover as the topics du jour.

Somewhere around day four, I realized I had not heard anyone say Trump or Harris or Vance or Walz or rigged or debate or vote or polls. There was a guy with a Team Trump bumper sticker on his truck, but I think that was from 2020 or 2016 and he didn’t read the phrase out loud for us, so it doesn’t count.

Instead, all the people I met were talking about wildlife and geysers, weather and climate, terrain and flora. None seemed interested in bringing politics into their journey. Maybe they don’t care as much as I’d think EVERYBODY CARES when I drop into the Twitter-verse or open the emails asking me for $3 to save the nation. Maybe they care deeply, but needed a bit of detox as they escaped the hellish battles of partisans for the gift of God’s creation. Maybe they just have better things to think about.

Dunno and don’t care. It was exquisite. Even better, it was a slap in the face, a reminder that I don’t have to travel 1,500 miles to enter a different world. All I need to do is move from one room to another, either figuratively or literally or both.

We all make the choice, every day of our lives, and some choices are more damaging than others. On Twitter, it’s all politics all the time and I can read 100 different explanations about why the same slice of video is the end of Trump or the proof of his apotheosis. Some of the politics has infected LinkedIn, but mostly it’s a million notes about trying harder, working harder, never giving up, and not being a worthless failure. During the Jewish High Holidays, I spent days in a room where all I focused on was my spiritual and moral worthiness.

The thing we forget, or that I certainly ignore, is that we have a million rooms and a million choices. Nobody forces us to focus on just one thing in just one space. Nothing requires that we answer every question with a reference to politicians or a whatabout. None of us is trapped in the misery zone, although we stay much too long by choice.  

What room should I enter today? Which room will any of us choose to inhabit over the next 24 hours…of 24 years? I can choose the room that offers comfort and solace, or fear and pain. Stupidly, I choose the latter much too frequently, forgetting I have the power to move physically or spiritually to more pleasant surroundings.

I hope everyone else is much smarter than I am about the whole thing.
 
 
 

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