I Can’t Get It Out Of My Head

There is a thing that happens to a person when something important is coming.

It moves in without asking. It finds a corner of your mind and sets up house.

I have had it for weeks now. I suspect a lot of you have too.

It is there when I wake up in the morning. It rides along when I drive to the store. It sits across from me at the supper table. And late at night, when the house goes quiet and everybody else is asleep, it pulls up a chair and keeps me company whether I want it to or not.

I can’t get it out of my head.

What I am talking about is the stretch of road between now and Tuesday, November 3rd. Not just the day itself. All of it. The weeks of waiting, the noise, the not knowing.

It is not one thing. It is a pile of things. The ads that never stop. The arguments on the news. The tense phone calls with family where everybody tiptoes around the one subject nobody wants to bring up. The feeling that the whole country is pulling in two directions at once.

Underneath all that noise is a quieter worry. Will things go smooth. Will people show up. Will the lines be long. Will there be roadblocks put in the way of ordinary folks just trying to do their part. And what comes after, when the counting is done and the arguing starts all over again.

Stress is a funny kind of guest. It shows up saying it will only stay a night. Next thing you know it has made its bed in your spare room. It hangs its coat on your hook. It eats at your table. It wakes you up at three in the morning to talk about things you cannot fix at three in the morning.

I want to say something about that guest. Having it in your house does not mean something is wrong with you.

It means you care. That is all it means. People who do not care about their country sleep just fine. The weight you are carrying is the price of giving a darn. It is not a weakness. It is the shape love takes when it is worried.

Here is something I have noticed these past few weeks. The moment you say it out loud, somebody says “me too.”

You mention it to the fellow at the hardware store and he nods slow. You bring it up with a neighbor over the fence and she lets out a long breath like she has been holding it for a month. An old friend on the phone goes quiet and then says, “I thought it was just me.”

It is not just you. It was never just you.

All across this country there are kitchen lights on late at night. There are people lying awake staring at the ceiling. There are folks in break rooms and pickup trucks and hospital waiting rooms carrying the same weight you are. Their worries may not look exactly like yours. Some of them may vote different than you. But the weight is the same weight.

That matters more than people think. A load carried alone gets heavier every mile. The same load carried by a lot of hands gets lighter. It does not disappear. But it gets lighter.

That is what company does for a person. It does not take the burden away. It gives you the courage to keep carrying it.

Now, I am not going to tell you to stop worrying. That advice never helped anybody in the history of the world. You cannot order a thought out of your head. The harder you push it out, the harder it pushes back.

But you can give it somewhere to go.

A worry with no place to land just circles. Round and round, like a dog that cannot settle. A worry that has a job to do starts to calm down. It knows what it is for.

So let me say this about the roadblocks. You cannot clear every roadblock on every road in this country. Nobody can. That is too big a job for one person, and it was never yours alone.

What you can do is drive your own car. Know your own road. Take care of your own part, the part with your name on it. The rest of the roads belong to millions of other people, and they are driving them too. You do not have to carry the whole country on your back. Just your share of it.

And yes, there will be battles that come after. There always are. Arguments that run on long past the day. Hard words. Hard feelings. Nobody can promise you it will all be settled and quiet on the morning after.

But tomorrow’s battles get tomorrow’s strength. You do not have to fight them tonight. Tonight you only have to carry what is in front of you.

Here is the thing I keep coming back to when the guest wakes me up. This road has an end.

Tuesday, November 3rd is a gate. Everything between now and then is leading up to it. When you reach that gate and do what is yours to do, that thing in your head has finished its work. It kept you watchful. It kept you caring. It brought you to the door.

After that, you get to set some of it down. Not all of it. A person who loves his country never sets all of it down. But some of it. Enough to sleep.

There is a kind of rest that only comes after you have done your part. It is different from the rest you get from ignoring a thing. It goes deeper. It is the rest of a man who did his day’s work and knows it.

That rest is waiting on the other side of the gate. It is not far now.

So if it is in your head too, and it keeps you up at night, I want you to know something. You are not the only one awake. Somewhere down the road another kitchen light is on. Somebody else is sitting at their table with the same weight in their chest, wondering if anybody else feels it.

They do. You do. We all do.

I can’t get it out of my head. Maybe you can’t either. That’s all right.

We will carry it together until the day comes. And then, together, we will set it down.

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This post was drafted with AI governed assistance and reviewed and directed by Michael S. Faust Sr. before publication.

” Attic Thoughts”-library – Intelligent People Assume Nothing