Identity Crisis In The Midst Of Chaos

Life is filled with unanswered questions. From wondering how the universe was actually formed to trying to figure out the healthiest menu for the day, to which exercise routine will suit one’s schedule, our lives are complex and filled with wondering about this and that, from small things to big.

Now we add the daily chaos and uncertainties that Donald Trump and Company are bringing into our lives.

In our old world order, before the November election, we had taken many things for granted. Yet our election campaign cycle, added to the crises many groups such as the African American, Muslim and LGTBQ communities were experiencing, showed us that all was not well throughout our country, beyond those issues that seemed to constantly make the daily news.

And as we know now, there were many voices that had no voice. Out of this reality, Donald Trump, a man who seemed, at face value, to have what it takes to represent the unheard words, won our presidency. But, as many who opposed Trump, warned, this was not truly a man who had the heart and the back of the constituency he appeared to be representing.

Rather Trump had a history, to boot, of betraying people, especially the smaller folks such as contractors and his students at Trump University.

Betrayal experiences wreak havoc on people, from the more minor inconveniences of a no-show date to the loss of jobs, as transgender military personnel are now about to face, based on Trump’s new ban on them, to the threat of lost health care, now being battled over in congress.

With each of these upheavals, each and every one of us, depending on our personal circumstances, must, almost daily, revise our view of the world we are presently living in and the place we hold in it.

As I have written in the past few weeks, New Horizons and myself, as a reflection of what is now transpiring throughout our country, are, also, going through major changes.  Some of these, hold exciting promise such as my “coming out” of a kind of hiding I had been doing for decades, side-by-side, no less, with my living a totally transparent life (Odd isn’t that?).  But even that soon moved from eager anticipation to fear, then to uncertainty. 

That these are challenging times is almost an understatement!

This morning when I awoke I felt almost rudderless; the moorings of my life felt shaky and undeterminable, unreliable. How should I proceed through this day ahead, I asked myself?

Now, at almost ten o’clock I still don’t know the answer to that question. But a poem, by anonymous, I remember picking up somewhere, reminded me that meditation, contemplation, close friendships and a good dose of common sense seem to have carried me this far. 

So it seems these will need to suffice for me today. Until I can come to a place of feeling more ordered and grounded in this crazy life in what once seemed to be “united states” that we are now all sharing in some chaotic form or another.

Who I am and what I am supposed to do here will, no doubt, be in the back of mind, whatever I do in this moment of a personal identity crisis in the midst of national chaos.