While We Await the Results of Election 2020

Buddhist teachers talk a lot about impermanence. And Buddhist or not, we all know what that means, right? Things come, things go. We’re born, we die. The sun rises, then sinks. We plant a seed, a tree grows, and then eventually falls. As do we. We shrug our shoulders, and we go on.

But these little phrases are verbal flak jackets that protect us from the deeper meaning of impermanence. Impermanence, as my teachers have continually told me, never leaves us; it never relents; it never stops. Impermanence is our daily, hour-by-hour, second-by-second condition. Understanding this fact in all its complexity has been for me a lifelong pursuit, and as I have refined this understanding, I have gradually come to view the world around me in ways that I hadn’t thought possible before I began this project.

I realized this morning when I awoke, with the election undecided, and with the low-grade anxiety that came with that realization, with that uncertainty, that this was the heart of impermanence. So many factors were in play, so many interests were being pursued, so many were being forgotten or abandoned, so many agendas were being played out, and all in the interest of one overriding goal—to declare a winner—that I saw how my own life rode a wave of similar contingencies that come and go with such velocity that I couldn’t possibly track them all.

Yet somehow, I had gone to bed last night, and several hours later, I had climbed out of bed. What exact combination of events—physiological, cultural, political—allowed this to happen I will never fully know.

As I await the results of the election, I learn that the path to every goal is one that continually changes its texture and direction, even as I pursue that goal. Uncertainty is everywhere. In the case of this election, the outcome, the final decision, will be determined by a number, but that number will arise from votes being counted and votes not being counted; by votes being contested and uncontested; by election officials who are alert and attentive and by election officials who are exhausted and distracted; by those who decided to vote, no matter the cost, and by those who decided not to vote. And what drove those decisions—anger, apathy, laziness; commitment, zeal, integrity—I can’t determine, and even if I could, I also know that they will change, from voter to voter, election to election.

The first thing I must understand about anything that changes continuously is that it is continuously changing. Every statement I make about the nature of the world, about this election, should rise from that insight.

I will ultimately get the results of this election within exactly the same framework that I will witness the yellow leaf on the maple as it falls to the ground: when the conditions that precipitate that specific result have matured and come to pass. And when that happens, and not until that happens, a new set of actions and reactions will arise that changes the look of the landscape, both in the political arena and in my front yard where the old maple is confronting another winter.

This is impermanence: changing conditions giving rise to changing results that influence our lives in ways that we can predict and in ways that we can’t. And this flow, this constant motion, at any level that we choose to examine, never stops.

We can find productive ways to live with this ceaseless change and the uncertainty that arises from it. For now, though, I’m waiting on the results of an election that I have helped to determine because I voted. I can do nothing more about it, although I need to understand that the outcome of the election is only one event in a massive stream of change that will have widely varying impacts on those I love and know, as well as on those I don’t. And on the environment, the economy, and the jobless rate. The list is endless.

As I wait, here is what I know: I am in that stream, we are all in this crowded stream, and nothing is stopping me from reaching out, as best I can, in whatever way I find effective, to anyone else who is floating by.

That’s the very least I can do, and when I see, really see, how quickly the world around me is changing, and how vast that changing world is, I know also that it’s the most I can do.