(Emergency) Edition: A marathon, not a sprint

We keep running.

Well.

Here we are. It is Wednesday morning, November 6th, and the glass ceiling remains firmly in place. In fact, it feels more like a 19th-century ceiling: low and dark.

When I woke my boys up a few hours ago, they asked me who won. I told them, and they were disappointed. I explained that people get to vote (man, I hope we still get to vote in the future) and more people voted for Donald Trump than Kamala Harris. I told them that sometimes what we want to happen doesn’t happen. Sometimes we win, and sometimes we lose. I hugged them and reiterated something we say a lot during sports: keep showing up. Don’t give up.

I reminded them that, no matter what, kindness trumps all. I still believe that. I have to. They asked what would happen in four years. I said I didn’t know.

I don’t know where we go from here. I don’t know what to write to you all this week, or if you even want to read it. But writing helps me process, and reading makes me feel better. Words are powerful antidotes to despair. (It’s why people ban books.)

I went into Tuesday feeling optimistic but not necessarily hopeful. We’ve been here before. In elections, in our workplaces. In life. Some days I think that the glass ceiling is actually a mirage along the horizon. An optical illusion. Always just out of reach. But we keep reaching.

I believe Kamala Harris is a smart, thoughtful woman who would have made a smart and thoughtful president. However, women were only allowed to start wearing pants on the Senate floor thirty years ago. That’s a drop in the bucket of history. There are many people who are not ready for, or frankly don’t want, a woman in charge.

Jennifer Cook

wrote a brilliant essay that landed in my inbox at 7:40 am today:

issue #41: it's the vaginas, stupid

It’s women, yes. It’s also income inequality, the decline of the middle class, a historical pandemic, and its continuing reverberations, the rise of disinformation, and fear. Of the future, the unknown. And each other.

It’s social media. (I recognize the irony as I type this on my screen to send to your screens.) Facebook launched in 2004, twenty years ago. Millenials have moved online. We follow parenting accounts instead of talking to other parents at pick-up. We send each other memes instead of picking up the phone (guilty as charged). Mommy & Me playgroups have been replaced by Facebook groups. We get our “medical” information from Instagram instead of our longstanding local pediatricians, because our local pediatricians are declining. (Last year saw the fewest number of graduates choosing pediatrics since 1994).¹

And Gen Z has been raised online. Which means they haven’t been together at the mall on Friday nights, riding bikes around the neighborhood, going to church potlucks, hanging out in each other’s basements, playing sports in township rec leagues, getting Icees together at the WaWa (yes, I’m from Pennsylvania).²

Our communities have been replaced by the Explore tab. Our friends and trusted community leaders have been replaced by Likes. The truth has been replaced by the algorithm.

It can be hard to love your neighbor when you don’t even know them.

The New York City Marathon was on Sunday, November 3rd. I was distracted that morning, running around instead of paying as much attention as I usually do to the runners. But eventually we made it out of our apartment, joining the large crowds along the parade route across from Central Park. Together we cheered for over 50,000 people from all over the world, as they ran 26.2 miles for their own reasons, and for each other.

Because while running is a solitary act, it is also a communal one. Runners pound the pavement and the paths and the trails all over the world, out there experiencing the sites and sounds of nature and humanity. They aren’t on bikes in their basements staring at screens. They raise money for people and causes near and dear to their hearts. They ask people to support them. People do. They train in groups and run for fun. Runners don’t need a lot. Anyone can do it. Lace up some sneakers and get outside. Get outside.

Despite feeling an impulse to pull my head into my shell like a turtle, I’m going to focus on getting outside today, tomorrow, and the next four years. Away from the screens. Among people.

Will Leitch, an editor for New York magazine ran on Sunday and wrote about it:

“Strangers come out to cheer other strangers, where people with entirely different backgrounds and viewpoints can unite and instantly feel like they’re part of a larger whole, that they can lift one another up and accomplish a common goal together. That is the opposite of Trumpism. What makes it possible is an openness to the world, a curiosity, a willingness to improve yourself and the lives of others around you — to try to make the world, and the people in it, a bit better…

I didn’t run the race in 2016, which also took place two days before an Election Day that came with a lot of the same anxieties as this one. I bet the runners who ran that race felt hopeful about society, the same way I did at the finish line on Sunday — and yet here we all are, on the precipice, again. But I can take solace in knowing that, regardless of this or any other election, the marathon will return next year, and every year after, lifting everyone up no matter who they are, no matter where they come from, no matter what it is they might need.”

Regardless of this or any other election, we keep running.

I’ll leave it at that, for now.

x Lindsay

1. https://www.statnews.com/2024/04/02/too-few-pediatricians-health-care-costs/

2. https://jonathanhaidt.com/anxious-generation/