The Will Toward Acceptance: Time for a lot of Good Trouble

“I will do what I must.” – Obi-Wan Kenobi

The five stages of grief are a model that describes the emotions people experience after a loss. It’s been debated how accurate this model is, but it felt real to me this week. While the stages of grief are not intended to be rules, and not everyone experiences them in the same way or in the same order, personally this week I felt the following:

• Denial: A temporary defense mechanism where the person may think “This isn’t happening,”
• Anger: A natural response to the pain of loss, which can be directed at oneself, others, or a higher power, 
• Bargaining: A person may dwell on what they could have done differently, or try to negotiate a deal with a higher power, 
• Depression: Sadness sets in as the person begins to understand the loss and its impact on their life, and 
• Acceptance: The person accepts the reality of the loss and is able to move forward with their life.

This last one is coming more difficult than the rest, but I’m getting there. Why is it coming hard? Let me get this out of the way. America has chosen selfishness, hatred, racism, sexism, antisemitism, homophobia.

I have a very hard time believing this is what the people of the United States believe.

This week, the US elected Donald Trump as the next president. It will go down as consequential a time in American history, and world history, as the election of Abraham Lincoln, but for the wrong reasons. I don’t care what anyone says. I know this to be true. I know the history of totalitarianism, of fascism, of communism, of the fall of empires.

I take this perspective now and see too many similarities between the fall of Rome, the rise of fascism in Europe, and the rise of communist totalitarians and the current state of the United States of America.

But most of all I was reminded of the Maya Angelou quote, that I am sure has been making the rounds this week – “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

The first time wasn’t enough for America. As Rex Huppke opined in USA Today, “We are a country that just elected – that just willfully chose – one of the most cruel, unscrupulous and transparently self-serving political figures in modern history to be president. Again.”

That’s where I am having trouble with acceptance. I really did think America was better than this. I have to accept that we are not.

Orange Mussolini is a want-to-be dictator, who has a good shot at being one with control of all branches of the federal government. His character is truly abhorrent. His rhetoric is hate filled. He’s a fascist sympathizer at best, and an outright fascist at worst. He will use the Justice Department to pardon himself of his crimes. He will use his powers to persecute the “enemies within” (his words not mine). He will use the powers of the presidency to commit more crimes, enrich himself, and cause pain and suffering to millions.

But hey, eggs will be cheaper, am I right?

His words and actions:

 Stoked the flames of a literal insurrection to stay in power

 Pressured his VP to rig the election in the Senate so he “won” the election of 2020

 Lied about the 2020 election being stolen, and was lying up to election day about 2024 being stolen (clearly it wasn’t, so he was trying to insight chaos)

 Threatened to execute political opponents

 Threatened to shoot media members

 Was impeached, twice

 Held a racist rally in Madison Square Garden, conjuring images of a Nazi rally from the 1930s

 Speech slurred, memory fading, incoherent ramblings

 Cheated on his wives many times and bragged about it

 Good friends with rapists and women abusers like Vince McMahon and Jeffery Epstein

 Grabs women by their privates because he can

That all of these are FACT, irrefutable FACT, and his supporters do not care. It’s a cult, which is frightening. It’s throwing up one’s shoulders and going, “meh.” Also, frightening.

What scares me the most though? The realization that this is beyond Trump. He’s a figurehead to a larger movement. MAGA is a movement. It was docile before Trump gave misogyny, hatred, racism permission to be in vogue. MAGA is who America is, a distortion of ideals, a dismissal of decency and kindness, and a misrepresentation of Christian ethics (whether you are Christian or not). All of these things are in the DNA of the US. It’s just that Trump gave them a voice – permission to be proud of their deplorableness.

Is it more complicated? Of course. But I don’t really care about that right now. An evil human being was elected to the most powerful position in the world, and his supporters cheer and those who are indifferent shrug.

The price of your eggs doesn’t matter to me right now. Sorry if that seems callous. But the rights and lives of millions of people are more important than saving .50 cents on your groceries. If that’s out of touch, then so be it.

I am wired towards something better, something higher than any one individual.

Why I am working my way towards acceptance is that there is work to be done. Clearly, we are no where near the “Shining City on the Hill” that we were told is our Country. Currently, we are a Blemished Bungalow in the Bog.

And THAT is where I want to begin my focus. Work has to be done. The election happened, and regardless, it doesn’t change the fact that I need to continue working to make this world a better place. Had Kalama won, the same would be true. I’d have just felt better about the direction of our society. But the fact remains – I don’t have time to be sulking. I must, in the words of John Lewis, get into good trouble.

This is why I study philosophy. It is not for the times that are easy. It is for these times. Philosophy helps strengthen the mind, the body, and the spirit. If not, then why study it? Why would I spend so much time reading, thinking, writing, and changing my perspective if not for times like this?

Stoicism, my philosophy of choice, is a system that has helped me and millions of other people deal with hard times by teaching to focus on what they can control, manage their reactions, and challenge negative thoughts. 

During my path to acceptance, I reminded myself that my path to strength in hard times flows from the following: 

• Embracing what I can’t control: Focus on my reactions to events instead of the events themselves. 
• Challenging my negative thoughts: Question my automatic thoughts and beliefs to adopt a more rational mindset.  
• Developing my emotional intelligence: Understand my emotions and how to manage them.  
• Cultivating virtue: Strive to act with courage, wisdom, justice, and self-control. 
• Seeing misfortunes as opportunities: View bad times as chances to become better and face my fears.  
• Realizing true strength is within my mind: The mind is the only area of the world that’s truly up to me.  
• Promoting a nurturing strength: Stoicism is about being a good person, not being tough. 

Philosophy teaches us that there are horrible people in the world. That’s the way it’s always been. And likely, unfortunately, the way it’s always going to be. But philosophy teaches us that we do not have to be like that, in fact, it’s our duty to NOT be like that.

Marcus Aurelius believed that people who are mean, selfish, or shameless exist and always have, but that most people are not like that. Whether that last part is true or not, doesn’t matter because we don’t have to be like that. We can always choose to do good, be good. He also believed that asking for a world without evil or shameless people is impossible. Here are some of his thoughts on dealing with horrible people: 

• Choose sympathy: When someone injures you, you should feel sympathy instead of anger or outrage.  
• Empathize: Consider how many mistakes you’ve made in life and try to empathize with the person who criticized you.  
• Be kind: Nature gave us kindness to counter unkindness. If you show continued kindness to people, very few will be able to continue to be unkind to you.  
• Don’t take it personally: If you trust an untrustworthy person, turn the reproach on yourself. The fault is yours.  
• Don’t be irritated by smells: People have armpits and mouths, so they will occasionally smell.  
• Recognize that evil only enters your soul: The evil that bad people do only enters your soul. If you do evil in return, it’s not the noblest kind of retribution. 

Difficult? Incredibly. Impossible? No.

Society in general has so little examples of what it means to be “above that,” so to speak. We use the same names repeatedly to the point of near cliché. Dr. Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, Jesus of Nazareth, Victor Frankl, Mr. Rogers, Malala Yousafzai. All amazing human beings, flawed, but amazing, nonetheless. The names keep popping up because I’ve accepted that to be so above evil is the rarest of all human qualities. These people provide a template that few of us can reach. Turning the other cheek is meant to be an ideal worth striving for, but rarely reachable.

But we cannot stop trying. We cannot forget there is good in this world and it is us.

Like many idealists, I am a Lord of the Rings fan. I think we need JRR Tolkien’s wisdom now more than ever.

This week, I was reminded of the speech that Samwise Gamgee gave to Frodo Baggins in The Two Towers. It is one of the most inspiring and heartfelt moments in the series. This speech occurs in the film version, though it’s inspired by Tolkien’s themes of resilience and hope found throughout the books.

On their arduous, life-threatening trek to Mount Doom, Frodo is despaired and ready to quit. Samwise then tells his friend,

“It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end… because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened?

“But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines, it will shine out the clearer.

“Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going because they were holding on to something.”

Frodo then asks, “What are we holding on to, Sam?”

And Sam responds: “That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo… and it’s worth fighting for.”

A beautiful reminder of resilience and hope, Sam’s words speak to the power of enduring through hardship, finding meaning in courage, and believing in the good that remains despite the darkness. It’s a call to keep going, to hold on to faith in goodness, and to fight for a better world.

Through acceptance of what happened this week, I will find the courage to fight back. If you feel like I do, I hope you will find that acceptance to get into good trouble, too.

“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” — Marcus Aurelius

In this passage, Marcus Aurelius speaks to the Stoic idea of remaining virtuous and rational, even when societal pressures push in another direction. His focus is on the importance of personal integrity over popular opinion, encouraging the reader to align with wisdom and virtue rather than conforming for the sake of approval or personal selfishness.

Time to get to work.

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