Standing With Two Hands Full: 10-Days Later

Standing With
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An uploading accident, and yet, not.

An uploading accident, and yet, not.

Caroline Choe, Create & Plate© LLC

It’s been two handfuls of days since the election ended, and they have been handfuls, indeed.

This election was an amazingly reactionary time in America. The whole enchilada of emotions ranging from amazement, disgust, rage, frustration, empowerment, nostalgia ... you name it, it has been dished out in both the cold and blazing hot.

Ironically, as I was preparing to write this piece, I’d uploaded its image before I began, and it appeared upside-down. In sweet irony of events, that is indeed how I feel millions of us feel still. Bewildered, in an alternate reality (insert ‘Stranger Things’ reference here.)

Let me be clear about a few things before we go any further: I voted for Hillary Clinton. As Americans, we all have a right to vote for whomever we want, and she was my choice.

Furthermore, to those extremists who are trying to use Trump’s victory as a justification to kick the crap out of people, vandalize and patronize with hate messages, spitting in their faces, telling them to “go home”... WE ARE HOME, all of us. You’re not standing up for your rights, you’re just being an asshole. And ps, you won’t find your balls in a pile of bullshit nor a pool of spilled blood. Cut that crap out unless you too, want to risk winding up terribly hurt. Never be the fool that underestimates anyone’s strength, will, or character, for it will be your biggest mistake.

Instead, reboot, and start viewing people on a human level. People are scared, angry, worried that our future president of this country doesn’t know how to drive the bus, and will end up driving us all off the cliff. You know that feeling you get when you don’t want to lose your balance and fall off something? Acknowledge that, and hold onto it. This is how people feel right now with their own lives, and the ones of others they love.

All bullies are cowards, so here’s a tip - don’t be one.

If you’re so noble and brave, then put up or shut up: make America great, FOR EVERYONE. If you’re unsure of how to do it, use that smart and savvy attitude you’re holding onto at the moment, and educate yourself. Not just out of a book and reading articles on the internet. Get out there and do it the inevitable way: meeting people and spending time doing it beyond a handshake. Invest your hours the way you’re investing it towards your need to show how much you hate others. You’ll find that this will be a hell of a lot more enlightening, uplifting, and less taxing on your soul.

That said, this past week I too had to rack my brain and dig deep in my own soul. Needless to say, it was an interesting time to be conducting work within my small company, dedicated to teaching joys within making.

The day after the election results was a rainy one in New York City, and needless to say it was a big, gray personified-metaphor. Riding the subway was quieter than usual, with loads of empty eyes and not a single smile or conversation happening in any car that I was in. Perhaps even the supporters (whoever they were) were too probably in shock. I decided after running my errands that I would walk a mile or two to the Union Square Greenmarket to shake some rawness off.

As I walked, soaked up in my music and steps, I began to remember how grateful I was to be in New York City. Passing people from all walks of life, ethnicities, careers... it’s a city we got to call home and share with the folks that are ones we were being told to denounce. It’s the place that offered my Korean-immigrant parents a home that my father always wanted to have, and will still be my home wherever I am in the world. It’s the place that offers an opportunity to be whatever it is you imagined for yourself with however much or little, and no amount of xenophobia or change was going to stop it from happening.

Once I’d reached my destination, I finally had a few answers to what I could do to help find solace or resolution from the inside. And so, I took action.

I posted an open invitation to cook together in my home kitchen for the next few days. Whoever you voted for, whatever circle you ran in, leave it at the door. Presenting an opportunity for something we could all agree on: making something to nourish the soul together in a place of mutual respect.

I gave my annual Pre-Thanksgiving event this past weekend, with the notion that it was going to be my great task to give everyone a wonderful night. I needed to plug my life’s philosophies big time of bringing friends and strangers together with food and the arts: around a table to draw and feast on holiday favorites, around the room to become two teams for a very loud and happy game of trivia, and around a circle of instruments to sing and play our hearts out together. Food and the arts were indeed going to work their magic elixir to lift people up, and it definitely accomplished the mission.

I continue to smile at everyone I see, and be myself. Along with knowing others possess the same right.

Listening to what people have to say (even if it’s something that provokes my gag reflex) and they are to do the same.

Above all, I made the promise to continue moving forward and not backwards. Being kind, generous, and protective of others in an enormous way I never knew I could, and determined to stay in the fight. Better together, stronger together.

-----------------------------

Whether or not this will be viewed as a long or short-term solution is not what’s important.

We have a divine role in all that happens next, and it will be biggest strengthening of human empathy yet.

I’m in, and hope you are too.

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