The Trump Era: Day 45 – Prepare for Impact

Ok, folks, we’ve had 45 consecutive mornings of waking up and wrapping our heads around the fact that Donald J. Trump is going to be the next president of the United States of America. What do we know now that we didn’t know before? To the degree that we can discern a pattern, we see that Trump will govern the same way he campaigned: as a disrupter. And he is doubling down on that approach with a team and cabinet of disrupters.

What will happen? Here is where I’m grateful for my Buddhist training in “don’t know mind,” a practice of watching one’s mind try to make sense of something that is unknown. The fruit of the practice is the realization that you are more happy and effective, and life is more rich and vivid when you recognize that every moment is unknowable and thus full of possibility.

We do, however, know the past, and from history we can see that disruption is essential to evolution, whether it is the Acraman asteroid clearing the decks for mammals, or the emergence of postmodern world-centrism after the horrors of World War II, or the new and better person you became after your painful divorce, job loss or illness.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right? Yes, probably, in the long run. How long the Trump era will run we don’t know. What we do know is that it begins in one month, and it is going to be a different world when it’s over.

(Sorry, folks, for the echo-ey sound on the podcast. I’m still in a learning curve of doing this myself. Will be better next time …)