So America has a new, old, leader taking the reigns of Presidential authority.
Now what?
Ordinarily, I for one would not shudder to respond. But today I shudder, for this is no ordinary President and his Court system, having granted him Presidential immunity from otherwise criminal behaviors, makes this no ordinary future at our world’s doorstep.
Okay, shudder may be too strong of word. I’m not literally trembling or shaking, as the term denotes. But I do find my own mind traveling at times into the “there and then” of the future, quite far away from my own body’s calm and comfort of here and now. While away on that journey into Tomorrowland I am drawn to my collegiate lessons of History and Political Science, that double major designed to prepare graduates for work selling life insurance when not waiting restaurant tables. In my own case, it prepared me for graduate schools in social work and seminary. Anyhow, back to Tomorrowland. Where I do my best shuddering sometimes.
Shuddering is also what some of my tele-health counseling clients (via the Rula and Sondermind platforms I’m in network with) do best. There I’m inclined to call it living in the future and scarcely visiting the present moment where the body itself resides. Our minds have a wander-lust of their own, too often traveling into the residency of yesterday or tomorrow at the cost of abandoning our bodies struggling to sleep in lonely agitation. Tossing and turning as if decapitated (ew, awful imagery THAT).
Two courses of healing action to take. Three, actually, if starting out with the head back at home in the present moment and mindful of one’s safety and calm of here and now. Mind our body’s ongoing breath, sight, sound, touch, smell, taste. Still there. All present and accounted for? Next step.
When thinking about the future and its "what ifs" filled with assumptions, our first course of action may be to challenge the many “worst case assumptions” that line our trail forward into Tomorrowland. It’s only natural for our limbic brain to assume the worst. Unknowns and uncertainties ahead? We’ve now arrived in what Disney called A World of Imagination. I imagine the future biposy of that lump to be a cancerous tumor. That future xray of my chest to be pneumonia; that EKG a heart attack.
We may indeed be able to challenge our assumptions and talk ourselves down off the ledge as our brain’s frontal lobe kicks in with some good old fashioned reality testing. Where’s the evidence that my imagination matches my future reality? Where’s the evidence that testing means tragic, different means dangerous, change means crisis, foreign means fatal, possible means probable? Or, in my personal case, that Trump means Putin?
This proves infinitely better than shooting first and asking questions later. Asking questions first slows down our impulses and blocks our inclinations to disaster. Trouble is, in most such stressor-situations we have no quick evidence one way or the other. We are struck with having to wait. Presidential executive orders are carried out like MRIs, not xrays. They take awhile. Fail safes are built into the nuclear codes. Laws take time, whether to enact or to enforce. Even Project 2025 takes a year to unfold. Everyone has to wait. And waiting can be good. Fact-gathering means having or getting to wait.
So what to do while waiting?
That’s where the second course of action kicks in. Challenging our knee-jerk and worst case assumptions takes time. Questioning is good. Makes us think twice. And on second thought it probably won’t be all that bad, once the evidence is finally in. But if I’m still inclined to shudder while waiting, my best course is to prepare a response for my worse case scenario. Answer my own imagination. Suppose the worst case really does happen? Worst possible result comes true. What are some ways I could respond to it and which of these would likely be my best response?
Sometimes we call this course a “contingency plan.” Whatever. But it’s a planned response to my worst imagining. I get myself prepared. If this, then that. If that, then this. If there, I go here. If here, I go there. Put it in writing since I’m having to wait anyway for the evidence to be gathered and the results all read.
My own experience with such over my nearing 8 decades here is that plans and preparation tend to turn off the shuddering machine. They pause the alarm. Preparations are the natural predator of our worries. Having a “then go here and do that, then go there and do this” works like an anti-dote for our worries about the future. You may try it. "In case of this emergency I can still ________________ __________________."
Again, chances are that emergency won’t happen. Things probably aren’t as bad as they seem when left to our own imaginations. But why take chances? Go ahead and have a plan. Best thing I can still do even if the worst thing happens.
To recap: two courses of action. First the investigation. That buys us some time. That will take awhile. Then, while having to wait anyway, go ahead with the preparation. Prepare for the worst, just in case the improbable happens.
NEW president, NOW what?
Now the worst thing happens! The kind of thing that makes a person shudder in active imagination!
THEN what?
(Stay posted to next week's sequel on FROM preparation TO protection.)
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