NOW WHAT

Years ago a friend of mine had a small sailboat on Martha’s Vineyard, a 19’ O’Day Mariner and I had the benefit and pleasure of sailing it from the mooring in Edgartown Harbor all around the harbor and beyond when the sea was calm. One day a storm filled the boat with water and it sank at the mooring with just the stern sticking up out of the water with the name, “Now What”.   The dingy that we used to get from the shore to the mooring was called, “So What” and the picture of the sunken boat was on the front page of the Vineyard Gazette.

When something unexpected happens, especially when that something causes a problem that needs an immediate response, “Now What” is a good introduction to consider a plan for next steps to move forward.  Most of us can remember a time or an event that surprised or shocked us into a state of suspended belief while we tried to grasp the meaning of what happened.  It could be as upending as the death of a loved one or as trivial as the sinking of a small sailboat.  In either case, what we experience in those moments following is a sense of loss.

We have just come through the 2022 mid-term elections in the United States with some winners and some losers.  It is the nature of political contests that those who lost will inevitably respond with Now What. Some will even express doubt about the validity of the results, a behavior we witnessed in large measure from a defeated Presidential candidate in the last general election in 2020. He also fanned those flames of opposing the results into a frenzy with many of his followers.

The first stage in grief due to loss as laid out by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross is denial.  Not everyone agrees with her five stages of grief ending in acceptance because for many people there is no expiration date to grief and loss.   It is always there and learning how to live with it is the challenge. What Kubler-Ross says is “you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss…You will be whole but you will never be the same again, nor should you want to.”  That some get stuck in the state of denial means that they cannot make much progress toward learning how to live with the loss.  It’s like a wound that will not heal because they refuse any kind of healing or treatment and thus they tend to infect others around them.

We need to find a way beyond “now what” to “so what” can we do to recover from the loss. Whether personal or political we can move on and not be stuck in the past.  It has gone away and will not return as it was.  We can shift our perspective from past to present and look for strategies to rebuild and perhaps even find help from others.  We can put ourselves on solid ground on which to make repairs whether to the boat or to ourselves. That is what will help us engage with life again in new and different ways. When we do that the days are brighter, more hopeful and promising.  We need what Jack Bogle referred to as courage.