It was 2004 on the Northern Arizona University campus, the day after Bush’s re-election, and I was having the time of my life.
I was laughing my head off at all the people around the campus crying. I went to work and turned on happy music in the face of my grieving boss. I laughed with my roommates at the delicate snowflakes who were grieving. We laughed hysterically at our TVs and made fun of the marginalized groups (especially the LGBT individuals — we were pretty homophobic) on our screens and around campus. It was a beautiful day. All was right with the world. And we had WON.
We had a bushwacking, take-charge, cowboy President at our helm, not a weak, droning Kerry who was much too concerned with diplomacy and was missing common sense.
We had a morality that was going to be protected. Marriage was going to stay marriage. We weren’t going to overspend our budget because needy people needed handouts that rightfully should be given by the church. Fetuses weren’t going to be slaughtered. And all our enemies were in tears.
Good day. Beautiful day. And it was so much fun to make fun of their tears. All these people crying like it was the end of the world. You got a sense of power from it. And I laughed at their weakness, which made me feel stronger, which in turn made me laugh even more.
I was an obnoxious asshole. I was having the time of my life during most of Bush’s second term. It was AWESOME to see the fragile liberal snowflakes melting in the streets.
I know I’m harping on it. But I’m harping on it because it’s difficult to overstate it. I felt like America had won. I felt patriotic, like the sun had burst through the clouds and my life was beautiful all around. I felt incredible. Definite High.
And I probably would feel close to that to this day. Oh, I would have had misgivings about Trump, I’m sure. But I likely would have voted for him, thinking about it. And I might even have laughed at the liberal snowflakes…
Or maybe not. Because experiences happened in my life that kept me from looking away, that broke down the wall, that showed me what love looked like in a way that I had missed.
I learned that a lot of the right doesn’t love the people on the left, or doesn’t know what it means to love them. Oh, they’ll talk about it in their churches all day long. But last I checked, “love” wasn’t laughing at people for being “victims” or “snowflakes” without understanding them. Love wasn’t labeling respect “political correctness.”
I changed because people came into my life, people I cared about whose emotions and experiences I began to understand, and it got harder and harder to laugh.
This may sound weird to you, but if you can laugh at someone’s sincere tears, you probably don’t love them. You probably don’t understand them.
If you respond to people’s request for you to respect them by saying you don’t want to be “politically correct,” what you’re often saying is that treating them with respect isn’t a priority.
I’m not saying you have to agree with me or like what I say. I’m saying that if you tone down the laughing at “snowflakes” and begin trying to understand the meaning behind why people want you to be “politically correct” before you denigrate them, you may find love in places you would have missed otherwise — love to receive and love to give.
Thinking about it, that’s what happened to me. And now, four years later, as I enter a 2017, I’m crying with the people I used to laugh at. You might think you’re superior to me in your mirth. But the truth is that, having been on both sides, I know that the tears are better than the laughter. I’m grateful for the tears more than I could ever fully express, because those tears come from love, and with all the pain love brings, it brings so much deeper joy and profound connection than mirth.
Don’t you want that? Do you want to be stuck in a box laughing at others like animals behind the glass, or do you want to find more love and understanding for people next year than you did this year? Do you really want to miss out on how much you could care about other people? Aren’t relationships what life is about?
I mean…I feel that if I hadn’t deepened my understanding, if I were laughing at the people crying after the election, that I would be missing out on real flesh-and-blood people. We’re all on this world together, so we might as well look at each other. Dehumanizing people isn’t going to do that, and winning by hurting people, I learned, isn’t really winning.
There is hardly a day that goes by when I don’t look at those days with regret. Not just for the people I hurt with my laughter, but for me and the world of people I was missing out on — the love I was blocking out of my heart.
You don’t know what you’re missing as you’re laughing from the outside looking in. You don’t realize how human these people are. I used to be on that side of the fence, and I have cried over that laughter several times over. I know we’re crying, and I know it’s funny to you, but if you ever really understand you’ll find that, once you dig underneath the shallow appearance there’s a wellspring of love that, honestly, makes it better here, in all the pain.
It makes for a deeper, richer, fuller life to cry in love than to laugh in hate or indifference. I wish I could tell that laughing college student that back in 2004. So many wasted relationships that could have been. It’s too late for him.
But it’s not too late for you.
Thank you for reading.
P.S. I have a Patreon, in case you want to support what I do here.