The time leading up to an election is always super stressful. A gigantic cloud of suspense permeates the air causing everyone to feel uneasy. Presidential elections are their own special breed of agitation inducing tense fests. I often find myself forgetting to breathe.

Well, obviously I still inhale and exhale enough to do the business of surviving.

But they are not the deep breaths of truly living. They are the strained and shallow breaths of someone feeling a bit anxious about the future.

Just trying to “get through” this. As someone who tries to make the most of each moment,  living the past several months in a state of suspended animation feels like a giant waste of precious time.

I have tried to the best of my ability to innoculate myself against all of the negativity of this campaign. With the exception of the debates that my daughter had to watch for her Government and Politics class, we have not had the TV on all season. (Each week we record our guilty pleasure show “Survivor” to watch at another time).

I could only stomach approximately an hour of the Republican convention before I decided I had to make plans with something other than my TV for the next few evenings. Checking out The Record Company was a much better use of my time. Luckily I was able to escape any temptation to watch the Democratic convention the following week as I was away from outside communication at a Quaker gathering up in Lake George.

I’ve also tried to limit my social media, but not as successfully as I would have liked. So I have read a ton of articles from various sources and watched more than my fair share of videos. While there have been a few funny pieces, they have been funny in a surreal kind of way. Like no one can believe that we are really in this situation. Is it all just a bad dream that we will wake up from?

In fact, I’ve recently had multiple dreams with Donald Trump in them.

That’s pretty scary, right?

In last night’s episode he was hovering around in a blimp-like thing that was shaped like a backpack/suitcase. It kept flying around in descending circles while picking up speed until it crashed into a tree right outside my window and exploded like a blown transformer. Bizarre.

This whole thing is like a train (or blimp) wreck. I keep trying not to look, but I can’t help myself.

All of this election chaos is pervasive and it’s really hard to live a media-free life.

I finally figured “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” and found a somewhat productive way to tap into the election energy that is swirling around me.

I signed up for a 5-week seminar at Fairfield University called “Media and Democracy: The Press, Public Opinion and the 2016 Presidential Election”. It was billed as a series of talks that would go beyond the headlines and escape the echo chamber of punditry in order to understand how media impacts public opinion.

I really enjoyed the first few weeks learning some history of media as it relates to political coverage. The lectures were super engaging and the readings were really informative. An added bonus was getting a sneak peek at some cutting edge academic research taking place to better understand the influence of social media.

It felt really good to stretch my brain to take in a lot of new info.

I felt very optimistic.

As the course continued, it became clear to me that most of my classmates consume way more media than I do. They were obsessing over polling numbers and FBI investigations. They brought all of their frenetic energy to class last week and I just felt the stress ooze all around the lecture hall.

Everyone was interrupting and talking over each other spouting the latest breaking news and talking points. It felt like people were addicted to the very echo chamber of punditry that we were trying to escape. It was like being part of a CNN panel and it was almost too much for me to handle. I started getting agitated and unsettled.

I had to remind myself to breathe.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Repeat.

(actually a friend had to remind me about the repeat part).

We have our final post-mortem class on Thursday.

I guess it all depends on how tomorrow goes.

I think we will learn lots of lessons from this election.

Hopefully.

My favorite by far is still this lengthy one with Van Jones conversing with a group of Trump supporters who approach him as he walks down the sidewalk during the Republican convention. They proceed to have an open and honest discussion about a variety of topics and manage to find some common ground in the process.

“This is beautiful… This is what we’re supposed to do… We can argue back and forth. But if we’re going to get through this. The next president is going to have an ungovernable country. I don’t care who it is. Hillary won’t be able to govern and Trump won’t be able to govern. Becuase we have stopped listening to each other. There is a complete lack of empathy”.  

What is so abundantly clear is the need to listen to each other and find the common ground. And that takes time. And patience. And an open mind.

It’s messy. It’s not neatly wrapped up in a 2 minute segment.

As someone who grew up with parents who cancelled each other’s votes nearly every election, I know that life goes on after the votes are tallied.

We survive our differences.

We suck it up.

We get through this.

Life goes on.

And as this beautiful song illustrates, we are in a temporary state. It’s all a big repeating cycle and we are only here for a short part of it. We need to embrace the time that we are here and not get too caught up in all of the drama.

Easier said than done for sure. But this should help a bit.

“There’s a darkness upon me that’s flooded in light
In the fine print they tell me what’s wrong and what’s right
And it comes in black and it comes in white
And I’m frightened by those that don’t see it

When nothing is owed or deserved or expected
And your life doesn’t change by the man* that’s elected
If you’re loved by someone, you’re never rejected
Decide what to be and go be it”

* or woman

And this is just an added bonus that I found. So cool.

And with that, I press “publish” and head up to bed – with 2 minutes to go before it’s finally Election Day.