Turning Off the Noise

The pounding on the gymnasium door grew louder and faster. It was only a matter of time before the lock would give away and they would be inside. The shouting outside grew more intense, desperate. “Stop hiding!” yelled the voices. “We need you!” they begged.

It had been forever since Trump had won. Or, at least it felt like forever. Maybe it had just been days. Maybe years. Where were they anyway? This is not my beautiful house.

And then the door burst open with a bang, the hinges crumbling from the wall. They were inside, and what they saw surprised even them.

For days they had been pleading through the doors, screaming that they could not continue alone. Their minds raced with what would be found when they finally got inside. Were the others in danger? Had they given up?

So it was big surprise when they found the others……just relaxing. Calm as can be. They weren’t crying, they weren’t hiding in the corners. They were just, there. Some of them were looking at their phones and SMILING. A few were reading books. Some were meditating in the corner. Are those two playing cards??? A room they thought would be filled with doom and gloom was the exact opposite. It was almost, gasp, positive!

“What in the hell is going on?” cried a young man, his hair uncombed and disheveled. His clothes wrinkled and tattered from days of nervous tugging.

A woman waved to them with a smile. “Come on in, take a seat,” she welcomed. The young man cautiously walked to her. She reminded him of his mother. She smiled as he sat next to her, even letting out a light chuckle at the confusion on his face.

“What,” he started, trying to find the words. “What are you all doing?”

She smiled for a moment. “We are living. We are focusing on other things,” she explained and handed him her phone. The young man apprehensively took the phone and glanced at the screen. It was a video of cats doing funny things. One cat tried to jump onto the counter top but landed in aluminum foil and rocketed through the air to escape. Another cat tried to jump to the top of a refrigerator but failed epically. The young man couldn’t take his eyes off the screen. After a moment, he even smiled. And then laughed as a cat stood on its back legs and screeched at another cat. His own laugh startled him and he tossed the phone to the side and jumped from his seat.

“What are you doing to me?” he yelled. The woman stood up, her hands moving to calm him down.

“Relax,” she said. “This is how we cope.”

“What do you mean?” the man asked, looking around the others who had rushed into the room with him.

The woman glanced around the room. “We have chosen to turn it all off. Turn off the news, turn off the results. Turn it all off. What’s done is done. We lost. So instead of crying, like I did for days, I am choosing to watch cat videos.”

She pointed around the room at others. “He is playing word scramble. She is watching videos of her kids when they were younger. They are writing stories. Everyone in here has chosen to occupy their time with joyful things instead of the insanity of four more years.”

The young man looked confused, almost frustrated. He looked at the others who were with him. They didn’t know what to do.

“But,” he finally said. “What do you mean? You’re just ignoring everything? How could you do that?”

The woman picked up her phone. “It’s easy. I just hit play on another video.”

“Do you realize what is going on out there?” the young man cried, his voice getting angrier. “Matt Gaetz was picked to be the Attorney General.”

“Matt Gaetz!” a man shouted from a few tables over, jumping to his feet. “Matt Gaetz? The man under an ethic investigation. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!”

The man began to breathe heavily, his chest growing larger with every breath. His face grew red. The woman rushed over to him, grabbed his phone and shoved it in his face.

“Look, look sweetie, look,” she said as she played a video. “It’s Eurovision. The scene where Sigritt sings My Hometown and sings in Icelandic!”

The man’s breath began to calm, the red from his face melting away. A tear formed in the corner of his eye.

“It’s so beautiful,” he whimpered. “They know they are going to be disqualified but it doesn’t matter.”

As the man sat back down the woman turned and looked at the newcomers to the room.

“You can’t just barge in here and do that,” she scolded. “Not everyone is ready or willing to face the rage right now.”

The young man took offense.

“Not ready,” he boiled. “Not ready? None of us are ready. None of us wanted this. We are angry, we are scared. We want to smash the world and you’re in here watching TikTok!”

He kicked a chair and it went soaring. He wanted to fight but before he could do anything further the woman clicked a button on a remote and the wall lit up with another video.

Patrick Brewer was standing on stage at the Rose Apothecary, guitar in his hand, singing Simply the Best to his beau David Rose.

As the video played, the young man found himself relaxing. The tension in his shoulders went away. The scowl on his face disappeared. The woman led him to a chair and helped him sit down. She motioned to the others to do the same. And as the melodious voice of Patrick ended his song, the woman turned the video off.

“Ok, now listen close,” she said softly, “We are all scared. We are all angry. And there is not a single person in here who doesn’t want to scream to the mountain tops. How this country could let that man back into our lives is beyond any words I can think of. But listen to me, being angry and filled with rage all the time is not going to do anything but hurt you. You think that man and his followers are bothered if you are upset? They love it. It makes them happy.”

The man took a deep breath and looked at the woman. “So what do we do?” he asked. “Do we just stay in here with you and ignore the world?”

“Ignore?” the woman replied. “Oh none of us are ignoring. We are just not letting it consume us. Sometimes that means we need to turn it off so we don’t forget what we are trying to protect. So we don’t lose sight of those we love, the things that bring us joy. If we lose focus on that and just fight all the time well, it will never end.”

The woman looked around the room, at the many different faces from many different backgrounds and smiled.

“OK everyone, it’s time,” she announced. “First group, it’s your turn.”

The man watched as a portion of those relaxing put away their phones, closed their books, cleaned up whatever hobby they were working on, and stood up. He watched as they each collected themselves, taking deep breaths, hugging someone, stretching if needed. The man turned back to the woman, confused. She winked with a grin.

“We’re gonna do this together,” she said. “But we have to take care of ourselves. For each of us there will be a time to rage, and time to organize, and also a time to turn it all off and recharge.” She looked at the new group, their eyes had gone from calm and peaceful to intense and focused. “Ok, Elon has been given his own agency and access to our government expenses while he still has ties to America’s enemies and Trump wants his cabinet positions to be appointed with no hearings. Are you ready?”

The previously quiet group roared louder than the young man could imagine and charged out of the room. The woman knelt down in front of the man and put her hand on his knee. “As for you,” she said “I think it’s time you take a break.”

“But what if they need us?” he asked.

“They will, eventually, “the woman answered. “At some point, or many times, we won’t be able to turn our focus away. We will all have to join together as one. But until those moments, we cannot lose our humanity.”

The man understood. “So what do I do?” he asked.

“Have you ever watched Ted Lasso? I say we start there. Sunflowers is my favorite episode.”