Yesterday, I wrote about how I plan to survive 2014, a year Queen Elizabeth would probably have called Annus horribilus. Presidential elections are no longer proud and affirming national rituals for us; they are paths full of landmines, hatred, lies, threats,  lawsuits, and bitter divisions, even violence.

They are a test of all of our strengths and perspectives.

They are enduring dramas for us, especially those who don’t live enmeshed in conflict and chaos and don’t want to.

I came to understand in 2016 that elections were becoming triggers – upsetting, divisive and traumatic things that frightened millions of people.

Everywhere I go, people ask me if we will survive another election intact.

Of course, we will, but we will have to work at it and look at ourselves. And be prepared. The thing to fear is fear.

We are a nation that is not able to protect our children from being slaughtered while they sit in classrooms; why would anyone expect our elections to be free of worry and frustration?

Many unpredictable things can and will happen, and our pundits and leaders will not have thought of any of them, nor will our journalists or our own selves.

Our elections have become a kind of malevolent cancer, something to dread, not celebrate. A year from an election is far, far away.

The honest pundits admit that nothing that happens now will be the same by next November.  

If you follow these things, as I once did as a reporter, then you the early winners rarely make it all the way, they have habit of burning out or blowing themselves up,

But our media live on drama and worry, not truth and thoughtfulness.

Things in America are ugly, but they are also usually pretty short-lived. We collectively have the concentration of field mice.

This year will change quickly and often. We’ll see. Anyone who tells you they know what will happen is someone to ignore. This could be a lonely and bumpy year if you don’t hate someone or blame someone else for everything.

I expect to do better than that. You’re outside the tent if you don’t live to prove that Hunter Biden slipped some money to his father.

The world outside will fight about it all year; the billionaires are determined to win it all.

I must admit that I care nothing about Hunter Biden, who seems to have lived a lifetime of confusion and poor judgment.  

He is any parent’s nightmare. I have to live in my own bubble, as I have never met someone the least bit interested in this manufactured drama.

Many real issues have gone untreated.

Reading over the piece today, I realized I left out something essential to our survival.

That is the idea of understanding and softening what the shrinks call “original fear.”

Original fear is the fear ingrained in us even before we can speak.

Many of us think of things that trigger feelings of fear and sorrow. Donald Trump and his associates and extremists and zealots of all stripes and all sides and colors are powerful in their anger, paranoia, and fear.

They live for it and project their pain and suffering to the outside world and to vulnerable and weak people and what has happened to them.

It has little to do with us.

Everyone reading this, including me, has experienced some suffering in our lives and past, and our suffering is something we often think of or are reminded of or need help with.

I’ve suffered from extreme anxiety for much of my life and am relieved and happy to share my hard work, knocking it down and, at times, removing it entirely and replacing it with new and brighter emotions.

It can be done.

Even if I had fear ingrained into my DNA early, I could renew myself by creating a new story for my life.

We can construct alternative triggers that bring hope and happiness, not just fear and resentment.

If I hadn’t learned to do this, to live in the moment and give rebirth to myself and plot my own life, suffering would have haunted me wherever I went.

If I revisit these memories and experiences, I will relive them repeatedly. I got tired of that.

People often write me messages wondering how they will survive in 2024 and what might come after it. I have no idea.

I can’t answer those questions.

I do know that I won’t become a prisoner or creature of Donald Trump, Joe Biden, red or blue, progressive and conservative, new media or old.

One way or another, they are all triggers that awaken frightening and painful experiences.

The political parties are closer to each other than one might think. Just ask any Washington lobbyist. There seem to be few clean hands.

I refuse to become a slave to someone else’s values.

I am no longer the child of original fear, fragile and vulnerable, with no way to defend myself and no one to protect me. I can do it myself.

There is a film, writes Thich Nhat Hanh, an image stored in every consciousness. It shows the suffering of the past.  

Every time my mind goes back to the past, and I see that image or watch that film, I suffer again. The idea of mindfulness reminds me that it is possible to live in the here and now. The past is no longer important to me.

Every time, reliving the past is a slap in the face.

The past is behind me; the future is beyond me. I don’t have to relive that fear again and again. I don’t have to relive it all.

To deal with the awful reality – a Presidential election as a trigger, not an honored and honorable ritual – requires care and consideration. It requires silence; it means going inside, not outside. Who do I wish to be? How do I wish to feel?

It means meditation and contemplation. In the depths of my consciousness, I decided to do good rather than argue about it, and the first answer was the Army of Good, among many other things, that gave me new memories of good, love, and compassion.

This was one of the best decisions of my life, and it changed the trajectory of my emotions.

Over these good years, these new experiences and understanding have softened or pushed out those memories and families and mistakes and slights of the past.

People like Donald Trump do not frighten me; the poor man is such a mess I have little but pity for him and the people he has transfixed. Being inside of his head must be a horror.

He is just not important to me; he is more like the coyotes that howl and bark up on the hills.

I am not a new man, but a better and more manageable one. I love my life, and the riches of it give me something much better to weave into my DNA at any age, even my 70s. I can cut those chains and bring some soft pillows to lie on instead.

The feeling that I am fragile, vulnerable, inadequate, and unable to defend myself, the sense that I will always need someone to be with, will probably always be with me; those feelings will always be there.

It’s so easy to be caught in the past; it’s helpful to remind myself – meditation, silence, safety, focus  – to stay in the present, a safe place because we know and see it.

There is nothing to guess, only to see. And I had to go deeply inside of me to see it.

I have only recently learned that the past doesn’t matter and the future is not knowable. This has changed my life.

Politics in 2024 is a trigger, just like bedwetting when I was young or the lectures and scolding of my father,  and it is important to me to see it that way.  

I know how to deal with it as a physical disorder, not a matter of life or death, not the end of the world, not a threat to a way of life. It didn’t break me then, and it won’t break me now.

That interior incursion has helped me stay grounded, be more human, and find happiness and peace rather than fear and unease.

Being alone in quiet,  going into myself, I find comfort and hope, not trauma and worry. I find happiness and meaning.

Give it a try, I told myself. What I feel is up to me, not any pundit or political party.

That was some of the best advice I ever had.