The Antidote is Love
Last Saturday, I woke up with a rather dramatic outbreak of hives: My eyelids and cheeks were puffed up with hot, itchy welts that took days to subside. I’ve suffered from this condition since I was a teenager. It comes and goes, sometimes lingering for months on end before disappearing without a trace for years. Multiple doctors and allergy tests have failed to reveal any specific triggers, or cures. So, it’s been written off as “chronic idiopathic hives,” likely autoimmune in nature. (“Idiopathic,” by the way, is medical speak for “we don’t know what’s causing this.”) What all this means is that, for some unknown reason, my immune system sometimes attacks my body instead of defending it. As I slathered on all sorts of salves and lotions this week in hope of some relief, I found myself thinking about how what I’m suffering through is so akin to what’s happening in our country: America is at war with itself; we are being attacked by the very forces that are supposed to defend our body politic. The only difference between my affliction and what ails our democracy? The latter is not an idiopathic condition. We know the triggers — greed, intolerance, lust for power among them (the list of our baser instincts is long, my friends). Luckily, as the good people of Minnesota are showing us, we also know the cures — building community, extending compassion, learning to love and look out for our neighbors even if they look and sound different from us. Nothing complicated there; it’s stuff most of us have been taught since preschool. As I watch the spark ignited in Minnesota light up little fires of solidarity across the nation, it’s clear the antidotes are already at work. Our better angels will prevail. It’s only a matter of time.
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