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While I sat in my office on January 6th, diligently working on my assignments required by my PhD in developmental psychology, I decided to take a quick break and put on MSNBC so that I could watch one of our country’s time honored processes; the certification of the electoral college vote for our new president. I do not need to recount what happened next …
I spent the better part of the day and well into the early morning hours of the next, ignoring my school-work and watching the TV so that I could: 1. Confirm that the violence ended and 2. See what measures would be taken by our elected officials to ensure that THIS WOULD NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN! Unfortunately, as I write this column, I am still watching my TV, unsure that either of the above, has actually been resolved.
I am in my 5th decade of life, with financial and personal stability. And yet, I chose to enter an expensive, time-consuming and very challenging long-term academic program in order to attain a degree which would effectively allow me to meld my experience with the critical knowledge necessary so that I could be better qualified to offer advice, care and help, to others.
I have lost a child and persevered, living every day with a sadness that will never ease. I am intensely studying psychology now, so that when people ask me how I moved forward, I can answer in a real and qualified way. Simply put, I decided to go back to school to earn my degree not because it was easy, but because it was right.
As I am training my brain to consistently access what I know and feel in comparison to what I can prove, I am wondering, why, given what just happened in our fragile democracy, some of our law makers and legislators, are not? There is no disputing that an incited rally of protesting extremists stormed into the Capitol building uninvited and unscreened, destroying property and directly causing the death of 5 human beings.
And because of the forced audit and critical evaluation of procedural accountings, there is also no disputing that the recent presidential election was the safest and fairest election of modern times. Whether you, personally, liked the result or not, bears NO factor on the evidential proof. If I wrote a paper, citing no credible resources and proliferating only opinionated rhetoric, I would fail. If I continued to approach every paper I write in the same manner, I would be removed from my program of study. It is … that simple.
As I continue to watch the news, waiting for a resolution to the end of the violence, clinging to a hope that it cannot happen again, I remind myself that I must balance what I know and feel with what I can prove. In the end, this leaves little room for hearsay, rhetoric, opinion and lies. Today, I offer my personal wishes for continued safety to our elected officials who found themselves in peril last week and a sentence for consideration: Words, whether or not they are based in truth or on lies, can be powerful and, ultimately, lead to actions which write history. ENOUGH. ENOUGH.
Kathy Naumann, possessor of NATURALLY curly hair and the understanding that you can’t control everything!
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