Guide might help you chill out on Election Day
So much stress, so much tension, so much riding on the outcome.
How are we going to get through Election Day on Tuesday without wallowing in anxiety? What we need is a Helpful Guide to Managing Electoral Anxiety.
Until someone writes a helpful one, I’ll offer my own version. Here are suggested relaxation techniques. (And if you haven’t voted yet, please do before relaxing.)
Nature
Immerse yourself in the natural world.
Find a meadow, lie on your back and stare up at the clouds, as you did when you were a child. See the shapes as they drift by. Look, there’s a sheep. How peaceful, how soothing, how emblematic of voters blindly following the wrong candidate.
If you feel an urge to spit at the cloud, remember that you’re lying on your back. It will end badly.
Get up and go look at a tree to take your mind off the cloud. When the tree brings to mind wooden-headed partisans, move on to something else. Repeat until you’ve exhausted the entire natural world and yourself.
Mindfulness
Sit comfortably, dispel all fears about the future and focus on the now.
Well, maybe not this now. I mean who wants to dwell on stress-soaked Nov. 3, 2020?
So pick a different now. Let’s say Nov. 3, 2120, when whatever happens today will be but a footnote in history. If we’re lucky.
If we’re unlucky, it could be more than a footnote. It could be entire books, plus many movies, more than a few doctoral dissertations, some recurring historical re-enactments and at least a few solemn services of remembrance.
You know what? Never mind the mindfulness.
Movement
Perhaps a gentle session of yoga will relax you.
No? You need more strenuous activity to dispel the tension in your body? Try running, then. Still too laid-back? Pole-vaulting. More, you say? Kickboxing. Still not enough? Bull-riding.
Need even more? Pole-vault onto the back of a bull and ride it to kickboxing practice while doing yoga poses. It will either take your mind off the election or kill you. Either way, you’re free of electoral stress.
Breathing
Yes, it can seem a little strange to focus on breathing at a time when there is a deadly respiratory virus in the air and you’re inhaling through a homemade mask made from three layers of discarded T-shirt. But try it anyway.
Take a long, deep breath and hold it, as you’ve been doing all day anyway while monitoring exitpoll results. Then release it, imagining your exhaled carbon dioxide drifting into the atmosphere where it mixes with all the other heat-trapping carbon that threatens to ...
Ah, forget it. Just put your breathing on autopilot and go watch cable news. You know you want to. Joe Blundo is a columnist for The Dispatch. joe.blundo@gmail.com
@joeblundo