Like brothers and stuff

You might not be privy to this yet but hey guys, we had an election this week. /sarcasm

I’m not going to write about that here, not really. Okay I sort of am. I have already been pretty immersed in it here at work — keeping an eye on things, transcribing results, vibe checking the nation so to speak; so it is nice to take a break today. My takeaway for the week was to contemplate relationships.

Going into Tuesday, everyone knew that whichever way the presidential election turned out, some folks would be happy and others would be unhappy. Any result would quickly highlight the ways in which people in the U.S. have drawn strong political lines that separate themselves from one another.

So in the shadow of all the separateness, I have been contemplating togetherness. First: a disclosure — I am a bit of an oversharer. I don’t have a filter. I’m not good at keeping secrets. I find it absolutely impossible to fib. Some say it's because I am a Sagittarius (Nov. 24 — feel free to send me pulled pork bbq and strawberry pie to the HDT newsroom. I also like flowers, thx).

I don't believe in astrology in any literal sense but I still like to talk about it — kinda like how I insist I am not a Swifty but I have seen the Taylor Swift Eras Tour Concert Film on Disney+ about thirty times. This seems like a lot of tangents, but this is going somewhere…

I currently have three primary loves in my life — Ryan, Luis, and Rum. They are all millennial dudes with no interest in Taylor Swift on their own accord, but I have managed to lure each of them individually into watching at least half of Taylor’s concert film with me. We are working our ways up to the whole thing. They humor me because they love me.

This is a good example of one kind of togetherness. In this example we face forward against something together. Even though Taylor Swift may not be their “thing,” they enjoy sharing in my joy watching it. This is sometimes known as “compersion,” it’s a kind of contagious joy. It brings close people even closer together.

Okay, so back to not-the-election. Wednesday morning, I started reaching out to my friends and loves who were on the unhappy reaction side of the election results. I wanted to stand beside them and face something together. Sometimes, we weren’t really on the same page though. Even when you are largely aligned with someone on something like politics, you can encounter little discrepancies in your beliefs.

So this creates a situation where maybe we are not looking directly ahead, in the same direction. If our perception of the thing is different, our reactions are different. So how can we still be together if we can’t face the thing head on together because we stand against each other?

“Stand against each other” is a strange phrase. In some situations it could mean “in opposition to one another” — as foes, or as opponents; but in other situations it could mean being pressed against each other in such a way so as to prop each other up — leaning on each other. Even if we are back to back, facing in opposite directions, there is still a way to support one another.

Forrest Gump and his friend, Bubba, do this in the 1994 movie. The pair are there for each other as fellow soldiers in the Vietnam War. In this scene they are in the jungle at night and they are sitting in the mud, back to back, forming a sort of sturdy triangle shape of their combined bodies. "I'm gonna lean up against you, you just lean right back against me,” says Bubba. “This way, we don't have to sleep with our heads in the mud. You know why we a good partnership, Forrest? 'Cause we be watchin' out for one another. Like brothers and stuff."

If I recall correctly, Forrest and Bubba were not particularly political guys; they weren’t there trying to support each other as some kind of comrades in political belief. They were just supporting each other as humans, looking out for each other. Neither needed to sleep with his “head in the mud” because they held each other up. So that's togetherness, that’s looking out for one another — even though their views were in opposing directions.

While I am using a couple of fictional soldiers as an example here, I’d like to take a few lines to acknowledge all of our Veterans today as well. This column is slated for Nov. 11, our Veterans Day issue. I had a gig briefly doing some media work for the VA for a while and I learned a lot there. I don’t have a big family of Veterans like some folx do. The people I encountered through the VA taught me a lot about those who have served — they come from every walk of life, socioeconomic background, religious beliefs, etc. Many are like Forrest and Bubba, not even particularly politically activated — just humans out there supporting each other through it all.

Thank you to the Veterans for all they do to support others. Thank you to my loves for supporting me and allowing me the honor of supporting you in return. I am grateful for you all and appreciate you all, and that will always be the case no matter who is in the White House or how we feel about him (or her.)