Photo by EXPANALOG on Unsplash
Change is a constant, whether we like it or not.
If you’re into your politics, then you’ll probably notice that there’s a lot of change this year.
The European elections took place last week. For those unfamiliar, it’s the voting across the EU Member States for the representatives in the European Parliament. Broadly, it sets the precedent of what direction EU politics will go in for the next five years.
But one election was not enough. There were also federal elections in Belgium on the same day. The results of the EU elections led French President Emmanuel Macron to call for elections in the coming weeks.
Oh, and did anyone also notice there were elections coming up in the UK? Those will take place on 4th July.
Outside of European countries, there were elections in some of the most populated countries – the subcontinent had elections in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan (all with differing levels of drama) as well as in Indonesia.
Oh, and later this year there’s the small matter of the Presidential elections in the United States too.
Outside of the elections, we’re also seeing the devastating killing of Palestinians in the Middle East, whilst the war in Ukraine also rumbles on.
In the midst of all these political shifts, it can be pretty easy to get overwhelmed. I certainly have felt it. And yet, it’s important to keep on going with our lives rather than falling into despair.
It may not surprise you to hear that I am generally more on the left of the political spectrum. So the general shift towards the right in the European and Belgian politics has felt pretty disheartening. The shift away from climate policy is quite terrifying for the sake of tackling climate change within time.
But the most personal part has been the growing rhetoric railing against diversity, in particular trans and LGBT+ rights. It hits deeper when I personally know trans people just trying to live their lives. Considering less than 1% of people are transgender, the focus on the topic has felt really disproportionate to me, not to mention rather different to the image portrayed in the media.
Election results meant additional bouts of anxiety at the beginning of this week for me. I had to deliberately distance myself from politics so as not to get further stressed by it all. That was easier said than done, considering how (overly?) connected on social media I am.
What helped me this week was trying to keep all this news in balance. As humans, we can fall into a tendency to overreact to negative news. In the case of politics, we can quite quickly fall into doom and gloom because things didn’t go the way we wanted them to. I see this more in younger people who have less experience of going through the highs and lows of election cycles..
I try to see these things philosophically – politics has a tendency of oscillating between left and right. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. As is the wheel of life. In certain spaces there are losses, whilst in other areas there are progress. It’s never so black and white.
For my politico friends – it’s also important to remember that there is a world outside of politics. So many people I know get so absorbed into the politics bubble that they forget that the rest of the world carries on existing. Indeed, for most people, elections don’t actually carry that much importance.
If we want positive change, we have to get comfortable with change that we don’t necessarily agree with.
So take each day as it comes. Change is part of politics – indeed it’s part of human nature.