Acting Like a Mensch

How I’m Managing the Stunnedness

First, I don’t write politics, so I’m skipping the paragraph about how shocked but unsurprised I am by Americans who consistently vote against their best interests.

Second, I try not to give unsolicited advice, so I’ll share what I’m going through today and what I plan to do. If you get something out of it, great. If not, at least I’m posting again.

It’s the cover of the New Yorker from 2016. I hope they don’t mind.

I woke up stunned this morning. Lillian told me I said I wanted to stay in bed for the next four years, which sounds like how I felt, although I don’t remember saying it. At some point during the night, I’d looked at my phone, saw the election result, refused to let it register in my brain, and went back to sleep.

So here I was in the morning, stunned and moving in the general direction of despair. I knew I had to get out of bed, so four years of hibernation wasn’t an option. I started looking for ways to cope, and a few things came my way.

I tend to think in movie quotes, so when my mind said, “I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do,” Don Vito Corleone slapped me and said, “You can act like a man! What’s the matter with you?”

The Don has taught me many things, although I still tell people outside the family what I’m thinking.

Coming out of the blue funk led me to the Serenity Prayer.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference.

I am not prepared to move to another country (although I think about it a lot).

Sigh. I’m not changing location. What can I change?

That’s where Viktor Frankl came in. “Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing: your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.”

That quote immediately removes my helplessness. I can choose how to respond. I can think, write, and pray. I can carry on as best I can and face the challenges as they come. I’m sad, angry, but I’m not hopeless or helpless.

So rather than ‘acting like a man,’ which means less and less all the time, I think the greatest act of resistance for me is to act like a mensch. For those of you who are not of my tribe, a mensch is a decent, responsible person with admirable characteristics. Leo Rosten described a mensch as “someone to admire and emulate, someone of noble character. The key to being ’a real mensch’ is nothing less than character, rectitude, dignity, a sense of what is right, responsible, decorous.”

In other words, the direct opposite of what my country has just elected to the presidency.

Once again, I have something to aspire to. Now I’m back at my desk. I’m starting to post again after too many months of hiatus. And I’m going to control what I can and hope we still have a republic four years from now.