There is a strange relief in loss.

I mean “relief” in its most basic, most functional sense. Relief like the relief of a pressure that you’d grown accustomed to.

For me it’s a welling of anxiety over an issue that’s been resolved, a habitual reflexive response that calls up feelings of anxious anticipation.

“Will Kamala Harris win” — the relief comes when you realize that the question has been answered. You no longer need to expend the psychic energy.

Then sadness sets in when you realize the answer was not the one you so desperately craved.

But there is a relief in certainty. Even sad, soul-crushing, grief-ridden certainty, no matter how painful, no matter how fleeting, eventually brings closure.

Brute force isn’t going to change this. The wounds are too deep and inherited. Fecal flinging isn’t going to work., We’ve spent over eight years playing a game by a childish set of rules and the only thing we’ve “won” is the normalization of petulant hatred.

It’s time to change the game.

We are yelling at each other in different languages when we should listen to each other with the intent to understand. Not to agree. Not to change each others’ minds. That would be ideal but is it realistic? No.

I spoke to a dear friend who’s Catholicism puts him in diametric opposition to my views on reproductive rights. Are we ever going to “agree” on this issue? I doubt it. But we have to find ways to exist and appreciate each other and find a way to thrive. I don’t know how to do that. But I do know that what we’ve been doing through social media and polarized discourse will never work. It’s like teaching a pig to sing. It hurts your ears and annoys the pig. I believe it was Robert Heinlein who coined that analogy. I am in no way equating those who think differently as singing pigs. In some case I might be the porcine vocal student. It’s more about the futility of changing another’s fundamental beliefs. Suffice it to say: we’re going to end up with a lot of bloodied ear-drums and hoarse boars.

So how do we change the game? Well first we have to stop playing the old one. We’re playing Monopoly in the age of MMORPG… We need some John Nash level game theory here and I’m not necessarily qualified in the mathematics of game theory. But I would like to learn more.

Sometimes even if we don’t have the answers, we have to keep asking the questions. It is in the searching that we may find other truths.

These are the reflections from of my post-election mourning.