Social Media has become a very Negative Place

We need a break from the doom and gloom.

People . . . snap out of it.  The truth is that we are not on the threshold of Hades.  The only torture we will endure over the next four years will be from tying our fate to the actions of a few people in Washington.

It doesn't matter whether you love or hate this Administration - our lives are much bigger than that.

Looking at my own life, I see it played out over and over . . .

I remember the hard blue metal and plastic edges of the front dash on my dad's Ford Torino Station Wagon as I hopped between the seats on a hot summer's day.  My brother and I went with my dad on his trip to the gas station and that meant there was an outside chance we would score a popsicle.  Great times, really.  Hours of fun in a large station wagon waiting for something sweet.

Yes, I waited hours because it was during the oil embargo of the Carter administration.  

The worst of times, right?  Oil prices through the roof . . . huge unemployment figures . . . hostages in Iran.  In the days that followed, my dad convened a family meeting explaining that we were all in crisis because of what was happening with OPEC.  I spent the rest of the time he talked wondering what the word crisis meant.  Our meeting ended.  My question evaporated.  The rest of my childhood went on as planned - crisis and all.

What happens in Washington doesn't ruin your life without your consent.

I remember in fifth grade a young girl named Theoni running from the main office at school saying President Reagan was shot.  I went straight home and sat with the rest of my family as they ran through re-run after re-run of the video footage of our President.  One minute he was waving and the next he was being tackled into the back of a speeding limo.

Reagan lived and returned to office.  As fifth graders we were convinced of "The Twenty-Year Curse" of presidents.

. . . and quickly returned to construction of the tree house.

Life goes on.  We are out of balance with all of this doom-and-gloom political stuff on Social Media.  Like some sort of demented spin cycle that someone forgot to turn off, we keep getting re-hashes of how horrible life will be over the next four years.

Stop it.  We Will Survive.

We survived The Hostage Crisis of the late 70's.  We survived Iran/Contra.  We survived The Keating Five.  We survived Bob Packwood and Boris Yeltsin.  We survived "Read My Lips: No New Taxes."  We survived Monica Lewinsky and the Impeachment.  Y2K. The "Hanging-Chad."  We survived 9/11 and the war that took us into Iraq.  We survived Syria ignoring Obamas "Red Line" and the tragedy of Ben Ghazi.

It's called history - and as long as we are human, we will keep making a mess of it.

And guess what?  We are going to survive a lot more in the next four years - and it's not because of a person or a party or a political practice.  Red and Blue Presidents and Legislatures get it wrong because we are human, we're flawed - we get it.  Can we just get over it?

We can still talk about issues  - but let's do it with a little less drama and a whole lot more care to each other as people with lives that are much bigger than the issues we debate.