Arizona’s election is over and the winner is ... you

I sent roughly the same message to four anxiety-filled readers over the weekend, two of them supporters of Republican candidate for governor Kari Lake, one of them a supporter of Katie Hobbs, and one person whose political affiliation was undisclosed, but who definitely is anti-me.

I could have sent more notes but decided that publishing a broader, more public response would be better. (And easier.)

Each of the messages I received, in their own way, expressed a tremendous amount of angst over the outcome of the election.

This seems to happen each time we cast ballots.

I hear from individuals overwrought about who will win an election or who will lose. They are distressed because the state (sometimes the nation) is going to hell in a handbasket and it is the fault of the Republicans. Or the fault of the Democrats. Or the fault of me.

The agitated readers cannot believe their fellow citizens are doing this (whatever this is) to our children, our grandchildren or to generations yet unborn.

Perhaps you feel the same way. If so, I would tell you what I tell each of these clearly tormented, seemingly inconsolable men and women. I tell them that based on their feverish reactions to the political scene that the clear winner of the recent election is ... them.

It is a simple reality check.

If you are reading this column on your own computer or a tablet or a cellphone, you won.

If you are doing so inside a house you own or an apartment you rent, you won.

If inside that house with you is a wife or a husband. A child. A dog. You won.

Is there food in the refrigerator? Clothes in the closet? You won.

You sent me a note, so your arms and hands function. And your brain. Meaning, you won.

If you are not tending to a sick loved one, and you are not ill yourself, and if you are not dealing with a personal, professional or financial disaster, and you have nothing better to do than to read this — you’ve won.

I am a person familiar with loss. I am familiar with the kind of loss that makes everything else – everything – seem meaningless.

But even those of us who’ve been through such a thing, who live with it every day, sometimes lose sight of what’s important.

As a child in Catholic school my classmates and I were made to pause and pray whenever the family of a student suffered a tragedy.

After one of these instances a boy in my grammar school class asked the nun who was our teacher why God allowed such mournful things to happen. The good sister said she could not say for sure, but she believed God allowed bad things to occur in order to remind the rest of us how good we have it.

Another boy in class raised his hand, then pointed out that only a month or two earlier we were made to say the same prayers after learning that a relative of one of our other classmates had died in an accident.

“Why do we have to be reminded so much about how good we have it?” he wondered.

Without hesitating, the nun said, “Because we keep forgetting.”