2020: The Year We All Learned How to Slowly, and Agonizingly, Inch Towards Progress
I’m sitting here writing this on night two of one of the weirdest elections of my lifetime, and that has ever taken place. Not only is it happening in the middle of the third spike of a global pandemic, but it’s been two days and the results could still go a number of ways. It’s anxiety-producing. It’s nerve-wracking. It’s frying. It’s a little bit exhilarating. But mostly, it’s a lesson in patience for a country that’s been burning their “patience is a virtue” candles at both ends for close to nine months. We know that things take time and we need to trust the process — of the pandemic and the state-sanctioned vote tallying — but for the love of god something needs to break through. I need something, and I know you need something too.
As I was just washing my face, applying my serums and refreshing my NY Times app for the 506,000th time today in search of vote movement (of which there was none), a thought occurred to me. It’s almost as if the sequence of this election — the slow, methodical counting that’s taken days — during which our lives and seemingly the soul of this nation hang in the balance — is really a fantastic blueprint for how progress is achieved. We’re all watching numbers slowly go up and down, hearing CNN pundits on repeat discussing potential scenarios, deciphering between what’s real and fake, what’s hasty optimistic speculation and what’s authentically hopeful, and shifts are happening everywhere. Not only does it look like Biden is going to win, it looks like we’re all going to be denied our collective sigh of relief until he’s actively being sworn in. We’re not going to be able to relax until he plops down in the Oval Office on day 1 and starts to dig through the mess left behind for him. There’s not going to be a big celebration, there’s not going to be a blue wave that crests and rolls through to shore, Trump certainly won’t allow it to land smoothly. He’s going to make this as long and drawn out as possible, and to be honest I hope that he does — because in that we’re all taught a lesson in what true progress means.
Yesterday I volunteered as a poll worker here in Minnesota, and I have to say it was different than what I expected. I was prepared for long lines of anxious voters excited to cast their ballots. I wanted celebratory cheers, plenty of snacks and waters being handed to those in line, music playing, democracy at its best. Perhaps later in the day someone would announce that Biden had won Florida and everyone would break out into song. It would be big, instant and glorious. None of that happened.
Instead, a slow trickle of voters came and went all day. It was boring, slow, encouraging but mostly non-eventful. But the thing is — that’s what progress looks like 99.99% of the time. (MN went blue BTW).
Victorious progress doesn’t happen instantly. It doesn’t pop up on your screen and declare an unchallenged victory. It doesn’t explode through a group of strangers rejoicing together. True progress, true change, is slow and painful. It takes forever — and most of the time it doesn’t look like it’s actually happening at all. It requires consistent mental fortitude in the face of conflict, it requires questioning everything until you get to the truth, it requires cultivating a sense of comfort while in limbo.
Will the world look like what you want it to look like eventually? Will your rights ever matter? Will black people cease to be killed in the street? Will climate change ever get better? Will the COVID-19 pandemic end? Not all at once. Not quickly. Slowly, bit by bit, in some ways that are tangible and others that aren’t. That’s just how this stuff works. You’ve got to get comfortable in that limbo.
We’re pretty sure who’s going to win, but we’re also not totally sure yet. It’s a very uncomfortable place to be in — and I’ve got to give the media credit. Rather than giving everyone the reassuring, albeit presumptive, headlines we all want they’re holding off. Nobody wants to call this before you can and risk devastation, there’s too much on the line.
The thing is, we should all approach every race we run with the same cautionary resilience and unwavering laser focus we have towards these goddamn votes. Sure, in this instance we have no control over what these results are going to deliver in the coming days. But we do have a chance to cultivate a sense of determination in all the noise, some sense of security in our own understanding rather than anxiety about the uncertain. Because this is how it’s done — true progress is largely invisible.
It takes years and years to happen, and during those years a lot is seemingly hanging in the balance. Fights for racial justice, gender equality, LGBTQ rights and so much else happen in quiet little moments — celebratory and heartbreaking — around the world every day. You have occasional breakthroughs, the needle swinging towards your side, laws being passed, minds being changed. But mostly? We wait, until all of a sudden you look back and everything is different.
Have patience, listen to the experts, breathe and do all the things. But mostly? Think about what this moment is teaching us, both in gravity and circumstance, about what it means to earn progress. You have to be an agent of change, leave it all on the court, do the necessary housekeeping on your mindset and then wait for the rest of the world to catch up. It’s not pretty, it’s not glamorous, it’s not tearful crowds of people hugging and cheering (not always, at least), but it’s happening. Slowly but surely, envelope by envelope, it’s happening.