As I was lying in a surgical suite yesterday, watching blood spurt out of my toe and the podiatric surgeon working at the end of the table, a friend was undergoing surgery hundreds of miles away was undergoing heart surgery to repair a heart valve, among the most serious and dangerous of heart surgeries.

As a person with diabetes, any foot surgery is potentially serious, yet the operation was minor, and the danger is insignificant.

My friend’s operation went awry, and the surgeons were forced to “crack” or open his chest. He was in intensive care following the surgery.

He went into cardiac arrest, and the doctors scrambled to revive him.

I didn’t learn until much later in the day that he died in the ICU; they could not bring him back.

I have a note above my computer which reads, “everyone in the world has it worse than I do.” It is among the most important reminders I have when I write.

Here were the two of us, each undergoing different kinds of medical procedures. I came home from mine, he will never come home from his.

My refusal to speak poorly of my life or my work was inspired by the late Rev. Billy Graham, who told me when I covered one of his crusades that I ought never to speak poorly of my life; it might be listening.

He was the first person to suggest to me that was goes on inside your head often comes out in your life. The spiritualists now call it energy, he called it God.

Whenever you write something about the difficulties in your life, Graham said, remember that someone there reading it has a lot worse than you do.

I am not about to whine about my foot surgery.

This was the most valuable advice I have ever received. Yesterday, a nurse, the doctor, and Maria all told me at different times that I was unusually “good-natured” about the medical procedures I’ve endured.

I love the compliments, but I also know they’re not entirely true.

I am good-natured sometimes and ill-natured many others. There is a lot of anger and frustration in me, though I’ve been chipping away at it for years.

It was the Rev. Graham who made a deep impression in my subconscious, something holy men and women can do, even if you think you don’t see the world their way.

Being good-natured these days is harder than it was when he gave me this advice.

Trump is a surfer of hate now, he rides on a tidal wave of rage. Every word or idea out of his mouth is a dagger headed for someone else’s heart. How does a human being as furious as this man ever sleep?

How does any follower survive him?

As I think about it, I have come to understand something many others have seen before me. Donald Trump brought with him what I can only call a Grievance And Anger movement.

Patriots who don’t like their country and elected officials who hate government.

I’ve watched Fox News a few times to see what the fuss is all about. I couldn’t bear it every day, surely not several times a day. What a grim portrait of life they present.  Every story should be headlined: “You Should Be Very Angry Today, And We Promise To Help You!”

What a parade of cynical women with blonde hair and old bald white men with no sense of humor. They all speak poorly of our lives.

The Republican Party is now, inspired by Mr. Trump, doing the same thing as Fox News. Anyone who worries about the poor or the sick or the refugee is fake, or a socialist or an enemy of the people coming to steal money and erode freedom.

Why would we be surprised that half of the country is so angry?

I watched Fox at the gym the other day while on the treadmill. The the biggest story of the afternoon was a publisher’s decision to scrap six Dr. Seuss books that even he thought were outdated and unhealthy. He said so before he died.

You might have thought from the piece that our children were being stolen from us and sent into slavery by ruthless and scheming liberals and Democrats.

Dr. Seuss wrote and published 60 books in his lifetime, many of them bestsellers. Some of the stereotypes of African-Americans and Chinese-Americans were crude and offensive to many.

Dr. Seuss changed many of his books – enthusiastically and voluntarily – before he died. He would have been the last one to object to so modest a chance in his legacy.

Is that really the most important story in the country this week?

The  Trumpian anger machine is a hungry machine, it is never full, it needs fresh rage every day. My objection to this is not really only political. It’s that I hate to see what it does to people to be fed this poisonous died every day.

Like their header-in-hiding, they are all about grievance and resentment. They sppeak poorly about the lives of half of the country. No wonder they are so unhappy and prone to conspiracy theories and lies.

What else do they really stand for now but anger and resentment?

Do they even bother will policies that will help people any longer? They seem to be against everything and for nothing. Are our only two choices t be PC bleeding hearts and furious mobs with bear spray, beating the police with American flags?

I’m happy to let the people decide. If that’s what they want, that’s what they should have. But nobody will ever convince me that that’s what most people want. That view of the world is counter to human nature. It will never prevail.

Me efforts at a spiritual life have taught me, as the Rev. Graham tried to do, that I need to pay attention to the people in my path.  And hear and see what they are telling me.

My friend who dies is telling me to be grateful, not angry or whiny, about my health care. Yesterday, another good doctor saved me from another potential catastrophe.

I have little patience for people who define their lives by the worst parts of them. Life is what we make of it, no excuses.

The people on my path all have something to say, something to teach me, even the especially nasty stalker posting vicious messages about me whenever and wherever she can.

When people like that appear in my life, as they tend to do with public people in America, I’ve learned to ask myself if the anger and cruelty inside me draw the attention of people like that. It’s true what the prophets say. Love draws love; hate draws hate.

I’ve noticed that the angry and the aggrieved very rarely appear when I’m in a good place. This summer, as I wrote about politics, they were all over me.

All of my surgeries, doctors visits and surgeries have made me restless and grumpy at times, although I am grateful I’m not taking my frustration out on doctors, nurses or Maria.

The people in the Mansion and Bishop Maginn High School don’t care much what I write or have to say. What they care the most deeply about is that I show up and help them when I can.

It’s really very simple. They teach me to listen, not talk, and to feel, not deny.

They remind me never to speak poorly about my life and remember that everyone has it worse than I do.

Nothing has given me more perspective in my life than listening to a 14-year-old describe her life during 12 years in a refugee camp, picking worms out of her food, dodging predatory guards,  and scavenging for scraps of wood to keep her brother and sister, and mother warm at night.

Her father was murdered by soldiers who killed him and burned down their house.

I learn so much from the people in my path.

I’m not sure what God is, but in my version of him, he puts people on my path for a reason and challenges me to figure it out.