What if Hearts Are Trump?

When the things that feel scary to share are the source of the strongest connection.

The metaphor:

On Thursday, I finally went to Euchre Night at a brewery near my house. I grew up playing the card game at camp. I was thrilled when I saw the event schedule, but also nervous that it might not be my crowd. Beyond typical butterflies about attending a social event where I didn’t know anyone, I worried it might feel hostile. Like last fall, when I stood in line to vote in my rural polling place. The people behind me were muttering to each other about how they’d stocked up on ammunition “in case the wrong one won.”

There were two people at the brewery who made their opinions known: the woman at the end of the bar singing the president’s praises, and the man who opened the NYTimes app and muttered at the headlines, “This fucking guy.” I have no idea where in the political spectrum the dozen other card players fell – perhaps ironic, for a game all about choosing trump?

It still feels new for me to show up in spaces where I don’t know the political ideology of others, and where I don’t lead with mine — where I don’t seek refuge in the bluster of lefty language that protects my tender heart. There’s some real cognitive dissonance in spending my days building contingency plans for uncertain federal funding at work and my nights sharing beers with people whose votes may have led to that uncertainty. But there’s also power in not preemptively cutting off potential sources of joy and connection.

The story:

As a kid, I remember seeing a newspaper headline about a deadly flood in a different part of the world. Wide-eyed, I wondered why daily life didn’t stop. When my grandpa’s brother had died, my sister and I were pulled out of school and dressed in special outfits for a church ceremony. He lived out of town, so I hadn’t known my great-uncle any more than I knew these flood victims. The adults in my life had told me that all people were of equal worth, which made total sense to me. I was a rule-oriented kid, and the seeming inconsistency in adults’ reactions to these deaths confused me.

As I got older, my social studies classes presented stories from history from the lens of who had power, without commenting on who did not. Slouching at my desk, I felt an ache that no one seemed to share. I was at ease in English classes, teasing out themes and ideas, and in math class, learning ways to solve problems. In social studies, I couldn’t figure out why the meaning behind the facts we memorized went unacknowledged, the implications for the lives and societies impacted by the dates we recited. I concluded those topics and spaces weren’t for me, the way some people don’t like math or English – not because I couldn’t memorize, but because I didn’t see anyone reacting the way I felt.

It got worse when I reached Economics, a required class in my public high school that was highly anticipated by my fellow nerds. The teacher had a reputation for being passionate and eccentric, the beloved favorite of many older students. Maybe if I’d had well-formed opinions, I would’ve found it an exciting space for debate. But I didn’t have opinions: I had feelings. When we talked about invisible forces governing the free market, or memorized the cabinet members picked by then-President George W. Bush, I felt uneasy that we weren’t discussing what was best for the people being served (or not) by these systems. I ached for that context the way I would’ve missed a close friend who didn’t sit at my lunch table. Disorientingly, no one even mentioned the absence.

I’m not saying my concern was a special virtue: I’m saying it was debilitating. I couldn’t understand the tension I felt, much less verbalize it, but I also couldn’t shake it. It hurt in a way that overshadowed every lesson. Though it didn’t occur to me then, I imagine now that my hurt was tied to a sense of betrayal that the adults around me hadn’t protected me from cruelty, hadn’t shaped a world where gender was as irrelevant as the books in my bathroom proclaimed it to be. On the other hand, I didn’t need to be the one who wasn’t invited birthday parties to know why we shouldn’t talk at school about topics where some would be excluded. At the time, I just knew that “serious” subjects squeezed in my stomach like a constricting rubber band. So, I disengaged in class, trying to distance myself from the discomfort I couldn’t name.

When I got to college in 2004, I found people expressing horror about barriers to people’s general care and thriving, and it was a huge relief. I didn’t know how to make people okay, but I knew I wanted to be with others who held that outcome as a goal. At first, I was a quiet observer, participating in Iraq war protests and distributing t-shirts saying “This Is What A Feminist Looks Like” (though my unbrushed hair and Birkenstocks were hardly breaking down stereotypes). Soon, I found I could learn the lefty language and apply it myself, like English class tropes or math class formulas.

I started to experimentally sling around my new jargon and opinions, on campus and at home. I saucily informed my guy friends that devaluing femininity was a form of sexism, whether they located it in women or not. I acerbically alerted my dad that all politics are rooted in identity, so dismissing “identity politics” served to silence people whose identity differed from his. I remember rebuking a peer critiquing then-Senator Obama that calling politicians “pragmatic” is a way of saying you agree with their sense of what’s possible while disguising your opinion as fact.

It was exhilarating to transform my identity from misfit to leftist and my pain into righteousness. But, it was not exactly fun to be near me during this time unless you already agreed with me. In fact, it wasn’t that fun for me to rant across lines of disagreement, either. When I did, I either met with others’ resistance, which I resented, or reached the borders of my own thin understanding, a house built on no foundation. Either option forced me back in contact with the feelings that had plagued me in grade school: not cogent thought, but tight-gut sorrow and fear.

I wasn’t ready to reckon with those feelings. They were still raw and rough-edged in a way I wanted to avoid. Though I’d found opinions that reflected my belief in humans’ inherent worth, I still felt confused and ashamed about being both sensitive and underinformed. It wasn’t like my family had faced housing instability and I’d become a housing advocate: I was broadly upset that we didn’t have a society that consistently reflected people’s value and met their needs. My own desire for fairness seemed hopelessly naive, like I was a child quitting a Monopoly game because not everyone had started at “Go.”

After I graduated college, I was relieved and exhilarated to find a nonprofit sector job, working to close gaps in education outcomes. I moved to DC and found lots of left-leaning people like the ones I’d flocked to in college, trading political memes and expressing outrage about headlines. Still, I didn’t feel fully at home: my sense of belonging in these groups felt conditional, premised on my ability to keep up with language and litmus tests. When I ventured outside the group, I berated people who disagreed with our talking points. I was sure that the path to winning others over relied on well-architected arguments rather than exposing unprocessed feeling.

Then came the 2016 election. Throughout the campaign, every cruel, demeaning word Trump spoke sent me reeling from the violence in its logical conclusion. It was nauseating to see how many people tolerated the views he symbolized, antithetical to shared worth and dignity. For three months, I grappled with my relative powerlessness, the left’s lack of broad coalition, and the right’s lack of moral fortitude. It felt like a windstorm had torn down the opinions and righteousness I’d stacked up, and the tender heart I’d tried to cover was all that remained.

On January 20, 2017, I shared a nascent plan to try and build directly on the foundation of that heart. It was so new that I wasn’t even sure what some parts meant, but it felt true. “Setting my sights on this:

• Keep from getting numb to the belittling of others, as that is the root of inequality. Like a child, keep the same raw shock every time someone is treated as less than human or of less than equal worth. EVERY. TIME.

• Take care of myself so I can preserve the ability to feel this, even though it's painful. This capacity for anguish is my greatest tool, and if I keep it sharp, I can be a compass to myself and others.

• Keep listening to others to learn more about what I can't yet see.

• Keep from getting angry at those who don't see what I see - or at least, don't let anger stop me from effectively explaining. Practice clear explanations that I can feel proud of, that do the long slow work of changing minds.

• Broaden my sphere of influence and lead with love.

• Don't cut ties with people I disagree with, but don't hide my disagreement, even if it moves them to cut ties with me. Reach new people who might otherwise never see how people like me - people like us - are directly affected by what happens to others.

• Speak up, speak up, speak up.”

This plan did not allow me to personally defeat the Trump administration, as you may have noticed, and now it’s back. But in my sense of abject defeat eight years ago, I finally resigned myself to standing by my feelings rather than blustering them away. This meant I could do two things that were very new to me: I started to seek out the political education I’d been avoiding, to understand how power worked, and I started to look for connection rather than correctness, mine or the other person’s. This meant finding books and classes about history, identity, and power, so that I had the context and resilience to see the world as it is rather than hiding from it, while working to envision and describe the world as it could be, in my childish, beautiful heart.

I am extremely not done with these efforts, but I’ve been surprised by what they’ve changed. I resolved to try them to see if I became a more effective change agent, and never dreamed they’d give me a sense of groundedness that no one can take away. I mean, I can lose it, and I often do, but having found it once, I can find it again, over and over. It was stunning to realize that the very emotions I’d been pushing away all this time were the best chance I had for connecting with myself and others. It turns out connection is actually the best way to change hearts and minds. It’s also the best way to expand my belief in the worth and dignity of every person to include myself, too.

I am still so, so sad – and angry, and stunned, and disoriented. It takes so much time to tend to these feelings: they are often inconvenient and hard to explain. I still seek out people who think the way I want to, but now I’m trying to learn from them, rather than impress them or blend in. Letting go of the litmus tests means I can connect with and learn from a much broader array of people. In any room I enter, I’m practicing how to find wonder, joy, and curiosity; how to ask questions and let myself be seen. The risk, of course, is getting rejected on these more vulnerable terms: it hurts, but does less damage long-term than acceptance I don’t fully believe.

So here I am, putting my feelings on the internet, famed site of fairness and acceptance…just kidding, but still, famed site of searching for what’s normal, to see if others feel like you. Here’s a little beacon: you’re not alone. See you at Euchre Night.

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