Born in the USA (or It's No Party, and I'll Cry If I Want To)

Having an election-season birthday has never felt so fraught. These are my birthday wishes for 2016:

I hope that we make it through these turbulent times with our common courtesy intact. I hope that enough of us still feel it’s safe to smile at a sad-looking stranger on the street, come November 9. I hope that the biggest loser in this election is not human decency.

I hope that we learn that this propensity we have for binary thinking and scapegoating, this “us versus them” thing we do, the pile-on as we dehumanize and demonize the other, is primeval; it’s born of a primitive survival instinct. I hope enough of us understand that if we continue to act on this primitive instinct in our technologically advanced world, we may not, in fact, survive.

I pray that before it’s too late, we finally realize that we truly are all One. Each and every thing and every body is inextricably interconnected with everything and everyone else. A butterfly flutters its wings, and halfway around the world a hurricane changes course. All actions and non-actions matter, everything and everyone counts. I hope to God this realization grabs us all in our most private and vulnerable places, forces itself on us and has its way with us, so that we are filled with and are forever after the guardians of the knowledge that we are one world, one family, one love.

I hope we remember that though the personal boundary lines we draw might be illusory in the metaphysical or scientific sense, they absolutely must be respected nonetheless.
I hope that across the political chasms that divide us we build not higher walls but bridges of curiosity and wonder; that at least some of these battle lines might some day become occasions for expanded horizons.

I hope that the algorithms of our increasingly tightly wound, social media-saturated world do not continue to have the paradoxical effect of separating us into isolated ghettos of opinion, echo chambers where we only hear more of what we want to hear or what we are comfortable arguing against.

I hope that we realize that the voices we most need to hear from are those that we never, ever do. The voices that we don’t know how to hear; the voices of people who cannot find the time, the platform, or enough faith in themselves or in the world to speak.

I hope that those individuals who find themselves in a position to influence the media and the message, both public and private, learn to separate the narrow needs of their ego from the deeper needs of their soul, inextricably entwined with all other souls.

I hope, after these turbulent times, that our politicians stop forgetting that they are public servants. That, no matter how laudable they believe their own intentions to be, they become eager to never find themselves on the wrong side of the truth.

I hope we can stop kidding ourselves that anything less than the truth will make us free.
I hope we all feel secure enough in our own truths that we are not threatened by anyone else’s.

I hope even the most brittle among us are able to stop judging, competing with, and excluding others in order to feel better about themselves.
I want us to stop mistaking bravado for real courage, and compensatory over-confidence for wholehearted self-acceptance.
I want us to stop confusing pity with compassion. May we all learn to recognize the difference between genuine empathy and savvy self-serving spiel.
Especially lately, I’ve been wanting people to know that frustrated despair is not the same as apathy.

I hope that we can clearly see how the fate of those who are starving and broken in this world is controlled by the ones who are obscenely wealthy, greedy, and toxically ambitious— and also starving and broken, though less aware of it. Yes, obscenely wealthy, toxically ambitious, and deeply human.

Old-school human, I hope they’ll someday say. I hope our children’s children’s children will survive to talk about these bad old days, when we still let the bully boys and the mean girls rule the playground. Back when we privileged shrewdness and charisma in our leaders over wisdom and integrity. Before we learned to stop placing so much more social value on the amount of money people make and spend, than on the quality of care they give.

I hope that some day soon we’ll all have the luxury of listening for and responding to that small still voice that calls to us, rather than feeling driven to forge our way forward in a hostile, competitive world, or compelled to turn our attentions only to the exigencies of daily life.

I hope that every one of us has our arms so full with the precious wildchild that is our own souls and that we are so set upon our own paths, that the poisonous delusions of envy and elitism are forever banished from human relations.

And while I’m at it— it’s my party, so there will be no blackballing, gaslighting, scene-stealing, triangulation or power-playing. No one-upmanship or self-righteous finger-pointing; no emotional blackmail or sneaky undermining. No identity theft of any kind, and you are absolutely forbidden to sell your soul to the highest bidder, the biggest audience or the nearest exit. It is mandatory that you find some way to sing and dance here, even and especially if it’s only in spirit. Zero-sum is just a bad dream at my party; there will always be enough cake to go around. Come on in and get the piece that has your name on it.

I hope that some day the lonely misanthrope in me has a chance to watch the sun rise with the disheartened dreamer in you.

I hope that all your best dreams come true.