What Slips Our Mind

08 Feb 2026 Leave a comment

by Denise in anger, Authoritarian, Buddhism, Government, Kindness, meditation, Politics, President, Republican, Spirituality, Trump Tags: , , , , , , ,

The world has no need to be represented: there it is, all around us, all the time. What it needs is to be loved better. Or maybe, what we need is to be reminded to love it and to be shown how, because sometimes, busy as we get trying to stay alive, loving the world slips our mind.
George Saunders

I listened to Heather Cox Richardson talk about the murder of Alex Pretti right after it happened. She was, in her words, “incensed” and “furious beyond articulation.” She explained that was why her voice sounded flat. She was so choked up by the end of the video that she simply asked that we carry the torch forward, then abruptly cut off. She never does that – it is a measure of her grief and humanity.

I’ve called a bunch of republican senators and left messages, blaming them for the murder of both Alex Pretti and Rene Good. It’s not enough. It felt like nothing because to shame someone, they have to be capable of feeling shame. I am devastated by this. I listen to HCR at least twice a week because while on the one hand she reminds us this is going to get much worse, on the other, she offers the facts of any given situation and she holds steady. We need people like her.

And we need to listen to all the sane politicians who are telling us not to get violent. That is what Trump and his regime want. They want to goad people until they lose their shit and that will give them an excuse to send in the military and create police states across the country. We can’t let this happen.

This is a tall ask not only because of the regime’s actions, but because they then rush to the nearest microphone to tell us what we saw is not what we saw and that what is so, is not. Suddenly the country is filled with “domestic terrorists” as a pretext for the Insurrection Act. Unfortunately, this is true. It’s just that the terrorists are inside the White House. 

I’ve read 1984 many times. During each reading my anxiety was palpable. To imagine having to live that – I thought it a really well-written fantasy. But it is here, it is now.

Like many, I feel helpless. We must continue to protest, to call, to write letters, to stay informed….but what else? This morning I thought that I needed to get my mind right. We all need to get our minds right. We need to protest what is happening and protect our neighbors without doing Trump’s work for him.

I’ve been thinking to do more than dabble in Buddhism. Yes, I meditate daily, read – or half-read – a book here and there, listen to the occasional Dharma talk. But I want more structure and I want it on a sustained basis. I want more than to meditate and to remind myself to be present as I go about my day. I want teaching.

I decided to start with an IMS (Insight Meditation Society) audio program which I’m listening to on the Buddhist retreat I’m currently at. I know enough about Buddhism to know that we are to love, no matter what. And one of the reasons I’ve avoided more serious inquiry into Buddhism is just that. Because that means facing what is happening in this country and the people who are causing it and what? Love them? Cos-player Kristi Noem? Evil white nationalist Stephen Miller? Blowhard J.D. Vance? Degenerate Trump? And the feckless, cowardly, sycophantic republicans supporting them?

You see my problem.

I know full well that any bitter feelings I have are felt by me and therefore I am the one who suffers them. One of my favorite sayings is “Being angry is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies.” And nothing about Buddhism is stupid – it is not a philosophy of sit home and say “om” and do nothing. It’s about the mind that you do it with. Can I be angry in a skillful way?

This is no easy ask but it’s worth the work of practicing it. The people in Minneapolis are living this. Their response has been to assemble peacefully, protest loudly, help their friends and neighbors. I am in awe with the way they are handling the murderers – aka ICE – that have been sent into their community.

The nation watches this and we seethe. We know what it is to hate. Hate is what rises when I have even a passing thought of Trump and sycophantic regime. But I am the one who suffers that. And I wouldn’t want to act in that state of mind because no good will come for anyone if I do.

That doesn’t mean not to act. The question is what works to free the mind from suffering, from hate. Then we can act skillfully. Metta meditation, also known as loving-kindness, is practice rooted in cultivating compassion, love and goodwill. It involves saying a set of phrases to oneself, to a loved one, to a neutral person, to a difficult person and then to all beings. It is the most difficult form of meditation for me and I mostly avoid it. I’ve got my phrases: May you be happy, may you be free from suffering, may you know peace, joy and prosperity, may you know love.

The point is not that I am going to magically alter anyone’s life by saying these things. I’m not going to make anyone happy or rich or peaceful. What I’m trying to do is open my heart and clear my mind. If I truly feel compassion, I will do no harm. Kindness will be felt not only by whoever I’m directing it to but also by me. I know this because I’ve felt kindness rise and flow. It is not something I can control, but the by-product of practice. Would that I feel it all the time, but such is the nature of impermanence. Even a preferred state of being will pass.

This has been a really long way of writing what I’m about to write, as offensive as it might sound. I do not mean it that way. When I think of a “difficult” person, it’s someone I’m having a hard time, someone that brings up rage, disgust, resentment. There is no one who does that more than Trump and his devotees. Am I to sit and wish them…well, anything other than living whatever their very own version of hell would be? Because wishing them dead seems an easy out for them.

But think about this. If any of those miscreants were happy or joyful or peaceful or free from suffering, would they act as they do? So maybe the words are something like, “May you be free from rage, from evil, from greed, from racism, from degeneracy.”  Because again – the goal is to ease these things in our own minds so we can can see clearly enough to take right action and not make any of this worse.

We must overcome Trump, and in the process, not become him.

© 2026 Denise Smyth

It Matters

28 Sep 2025 4 Comments

by Denise in Authoritarian, Death of a Child, Government, Politics, President, Trump, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , ,

“If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. And a people that can no longer believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.”
Hannah Arendt

Writing keeps me company. It’s the one way my thoughts and I actually work together. Without writing, my undisciplined mind goes on the attack in spite of the daily mediating I do or the wise words I read from those who know better or even the practice of noticing what my mind is doing and saying, “Oh, yeah, that again.” 

Philip, too, keeps me company. He’s there when I turn to him and after nearly 14 years I still hear him, I still take dictation from him. This, I think, is no special skill. I think anyone who has lost someone can pick up a pen and a piece of paper and listen for them. Much as I’ve been doing it for all these years – some years less so than others – I do understand  how hard it is. I still wonder every time I open my journal if he’ll be there, if I’m kidding myself, is this going to be the time there is…nothing? It never turns out that way. He’s always there and the things he says are often things I’ve never thought. I’d think there a thousand ways anyone reading this could explain it away. It doesn’t matter. I listen, he speaks, that is enough for me.

Back in February, my friend John suggested I go back to writing the book I started about Philip and that I should ask Philip to help me. I’d started a memoir and really can’t say why I put it down. Not writing begets not writing and for a long time I did nothing. But not writing also begets an illness of sorts, one that corrodes my mind, my soul, my psyche and is so potent that I look fine and mostly act fine, but that unseen corrosion is hell bent on driving me toward that final, that terrible, that very last crash.

So I took myself to Greece in June for a writing retreat and then to upstate New York in August for another at a Buddhist Center. I’ve reduced my hours at work and am finally writing every day. I am closer to Philip than ever as he helps me navigate this, closer to Natalie because she is the one I share his death – and my life – with the most. 

None of this is what I meant to write about. It’s easier, though, than trying to write about what I see happening in this country because that is so big and so awful and seems to require an intellect far greater than mine with a grasp of history and politics that I do not have. So I sat with Philip before I wrote this and he reminded me there are all kinds of readers for all kinds of writers and my job is to find my heart. It’s nothing more than what I work toward no matter what I’m writing about. What else can I do – it is rotten out there, the stench of this administration is overpowering and putting the covers over my head to keep out the rankness isn’t working. It is exactly what Trump et al are going for. Manufacture crises to divert attention from the real problems, lie, lie and then lie some more, make “the other” the enemy which means anyone who disagrees with Trump, degrade institutions, ignore courts and precedents, surround yourself with sycophants who fawn over you, turn the economically disadvantaged into losers – and illegal losers at that! – who are taking advantage of YOUR hard earned money so let’s take away their health care and their SNAP benefits and that will show them.

And that’s just in our country. If the administration sees no moral imperative to take care of their own, they’re certainly not going to help anyone else. So USAID is withdrawn and people all over the world are suffering, dying. Yet Trump came up with $20 billion to prop up a right wing government in Argentina. Where’s the outrage? He’s spending over $1 billion to outfit an illegal gift of a plane for Air Force One from Qatar. And he’s building a ballroom while the cost of groceries and daily essentials rises.

What is happening? How is this happening? How does any sane person listen to Trump’s unhinged ranting and proudly think, “That is the president of my country, the greatest country in the world!” How can anyone watch a cabinet meeting where everyone at the table, one by one, fawns over Trump, stopping short of kneeling and kissing his ring? It’s like watching a terribly acted play except it isn’t fiction. It is actually happening. There are no adults in the room with Trump. The one child missing is the one who would know enough to cry out, “The emperor has no clothes.”

Maybe once we were the greatest country in the world, maybe one day we will be again. But a country that could elect a Trump has lost its moral authority. Under his rule we are living in an authoritarian state. If an election doesn’t go the way of the ruling power, it is challenged (check). Civil servants have to profess loyalty to dear leader (check). Supposedly independent government officers – prosecutors, inspectors general, federal commissioners – have to do dear leader’s bidding or they are replaced with inexperienced loyalists (check). Private institutions have to do as dear leader says or they are punished (check). Independent journalism is attacked and threatened if it reports what dear leader doesn’t want to hear (check). Even our comedians – COMEDIANS! – are under attack as the thin skin of dear leader is so easily wounded. What kinds of countries take their comedians off the air? And which party are the “snowflakes” now, which party is the party of cancel culture?

I could go on and on, but to what end? There’s plenty of information about what Trump is doing if you want to know, and if you don’t, nothing I say matters. But this is what does matter. Words matter. Trump has made a mockery of this and his administration follows suit. He is cruel. This matters. He is heartless and soulless. He thrives on divisiveness and has not a clue nor a care about how to bring the country together. He is not a serious man except in his will to destroy and his rigid hold on power. Our national landscape is littered with the corpses of justice, equality and freedom. Decency – there is no decency. And if these concepts don’t matter to you, perhaps the cost of groceries or the loss of healthcare or the freedoms of the wealthy that are denied to the rest of us, do. Something of his gross unfitness to be president must matter to you. It simply must.

 I’ve never felt particularly compelled to “do” anything politically. I vote, of course. But this is different, this is urgent. I can’t say I know exactly what to do, but I made a start by writing this post. I’ve joined a political group called Third Act for people over sixty who want to make the world a better place. I read and listen to Heather Cox Richardson – she is a brilliant historian and a voice of sanity and reason. And the one thing I know not to do is to give in to exhaustion and like so many, I am plenty tired. That’s part of Trump’s playbook. We are whacked daily, we are whacked multiple times daily, with his degradations. This not only creates exhaustion, it creates a storm of chaos that blinds us to what this is administration is doing to us, to our institutions, to our way of life. And I’d like to end with some grand conclusion, or at least a witty last sentence. I haven’t any. I would just ask that we pay attention, that we all wake the fuck up.

© 2025 Denise Smyth