“Us and them
And after all we’re only ordinary men.
Me and you
God only knows it’s not what we would choose to do”.
Lyrics to “Us and Them”, by Songwriters Roger Waters and Rick Wright
November 8, 2016.
Looking back now how would I know how that a single day would impact my life? I was so demoralized after the results of the US Presidential election, that I felt a part of myself had died that day. Everything I had fought for was in jeopardy. All of my beliefs in humanity were lost.
Then came the resistance. The strong will to fight for my beliefs of what I felt was right. Yet over the short course of a couple of months, I went from a global advocate, traveler and world citizen to a hopeless overwhelmed lost soul. I had lost my motivation to fight feeling like everything I believed in was gone.
I am ashamed to say that I became complacent. I gave up. My burning urge to resist was gone. I wasn’t alone. Many of those who had inspired me had also begun to loose steam. Even advocacy groups and non-profits felt like they were always singing the same old song. Each message in my inbox crying for help was deleted. I was just simply too overwhelmed to deal with it.
So what have I done? Nothing. I’ve been sitting on the coach, ignoring the terrible news each day and giving in to complacency.
I felt like a part of me was dying.
As in the soulful voices in this song….
I had somehow lost myself along the way. That bouncing, energetic, “carpe diem” kind of woman had been caught up in the numbness of daily life and all that was happening in the world that I could not control. I had become uncomfortably numb.