Letter to an Angry Canada
Dear Canada,
I'm a work in progress.
I'm thinking a lot about how I deal with my anger and how I see it in others.
Anytime there's an election in Canada, there's a lot of observable anger. It's usually expressed by folks throughout the political spectrum, pronouncing the doom and end of our country. Rage farmers, watering and fertilizing crops of fear, paranoia, and distrust. Anger can be helpful and healthy, but the Biblical wisdom of my faith tradition teaches that anger has a best-before date. That date is at sundown. When I feed on anger that has exceeded its best-before date, I feed on something rotten and poisonous.
I've known the effects of expired anger in my own life, and it's kept me from fully experiencing mercy that renews every morning. Anger must be refined into a determined sense of agency. That timetable will be different for everyone, but the process must begin soon. If I'm upset about the results of something that's out of my control, I can best position myself to find better options if I can see clearly without blind anger.
An angry Canada will fail to reason, lack vision, and struggle to perform to its full potential. The future always has options, but the best appear when we're clearheaded, united, and engaged. We must have an ongoing and sustainable response to anger in our country. It would be tragic if we didn't take advantage of all the working pieces we have in this country to grow a future we can all be proud of. Why waste our present opportunity on conflict we don’t need?
This journey starts at a very micro and personal level. It begins with you and me being good humans.
I don't like outrage and can be very dismissive of people who post bombastic rhetoric about their imagined worst-case scenarios. But I'm trying to step back and look at the situation differently. My heart changes towards them when I realize that oftentimes, anger is a mask covering the face of someone who is truly sad. A more human response is to approach people who grieve much differently than we would those who are angry. This approach does not mean I have to agree with an angry person, but it does help me accept that they are experiencing the world differently than I, and for them…it hurts. Because I’m more or less happy with the recent results of the last federal election, the onus is on me to make this happen and approach my neighbors with grace.
It's the approach I hope people would take with me if I were hurting. Bad ideas must be challenged, but people deserve respect.
It's in our best interests to have all of us throughout the political spectrum firing on all cylinders. Angry people struggle to make relationships work. Canada needs as many friends as it can find around the world now. We will be better at forging those relationships if all of our best ideas have a chance to come forward. Good ideas can come from anywhere and from any party. Re-read and say that last sentence aloud until you believe it! Those ideas have the best chance at life in a healthy political culture. Achieving or maintaining health requires an investment of resources. We must invest more peace into our culture to gain the best results. Humans thrive in peace; they only subsist in conflict.
"When the body releases stress chemicals, the brain shuts down the hippocampus region, and you lose about 30 percent of your brain function, including the creative thinking faculties. Fear and doom shut down your brain's capacity for creative thinking. Vision and optimism super boost it." -Katie Patrick.
A human under pressure is great at fighting. We must find solutions to give all Canadians their own space and dignity to help them thrive. Canada has the potential to be not only a world leader but also a world healer. To get there, we must seize every opportunity to extend grace, hospitality, and hope to those who didn't vote the way we did. So, if you're angry today, take the space you need, but come back to the table in our great Canadian community with refined ideas for us to grow the future we all hope for. I'll keep a seat for you.
Thanks for reading, friend, may you find some time this week to grow some peace.
Notes:
Good ideas can come from anywhere. A point driven home in Jody Wilson-Raybould’s book, “Indian in the Cabinet”.
Anger expires at sundown. That’s found in the book of Ephesians 4: 26-27. Elton John also sang about it!
Anger masking grief. A powerful idea from Fr. Richard Rohr’s “Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom in an Age of Outrage”