Our nation needs stillness

The fears we are being fed are telling us lies that are leading us down dark paths. The space between “us” and “them” really isn’t that large. Stillness is the key.

We will all remember where we were on Saturday, July 13th, when news came that former President Donald Trump was shot. I was with three members of our Fearless Journeys community, sipping some Argentinian Malbec wine, eating empanadas, and enjoying the views of the Atlantic Ocean from an oceanfront property in Boca Raton. Hours earlier, I was attending birthday party in Fort Lauderdale for another friend. For me, it was a great Saturday in the making in the Free State of Florida.

And then three of us there in Boca Raton received the same group text: “You guys should turn on the TV there was an assassination attempt on Trump.”

When you see a text like that or hear news, it comes as a shock. It almost doesn’t seem real. Especially on what had been such a beautiful day.

As I write this newsletter it has not even been 24 hours since the events of July 13th transpired. But in 2024, we have already all experienced it together through television and social media.

Thank God that President Trump was able to walk away, despite the bullet grazing his ear. Sadly, others in the crowd were not as lucky, with at least one attendee confirmed killed. In addition, the 20-year old shooter was killed in action and we are starting to learn more about him.

I also have several friends who were at that rally and were very close to the President when the shots were fired. They work on his team. Thank God they are ok. One of them was pictured shielding two female members of the media.

None of us ever knows how we will react in a situation like that. When I saw that photo of my friend in such a brave position while shots were being fired, I sent him a text asking if he was ok. (He is, thanks be to God).

I also told him: “I didn’t know you were that fearless!”

Being fearless is a mindset that will help you do a lot of things, including protect you, embolden you, and give you the courage to help others. Our country needs more of that — even if it’s hard or stands out because it seems so rare.

When President Trump arose from being shot, with blood dripping on his face, surrounded by secret service, clenching his fist in defiance, it was nothing less than inspiring. No matter how you feel about him in the voting both, it was like something out of a movie. And then the Stars and Stripes were right there above him for the photo angle of the year.

July 13, 2024 will be a day for the history books, even if not in such a great way. It’s reminiscent of Ronald Reagan getting shot in 1981; or Teddy Roosevelt in 1912. Both of them, like Trump, were lucky.

Other presidents were not as lucky. Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, John F. Kennedy, Jr.

Then there was Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy and civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr, who were both killed in 1968.

In recent years, two members of Congress have also been shot and maimed. Gabby Giffords, a Democrat, was shot in 2012 while doing constituent outreach in Tucson, Arizona. She suffered permanent brain damage. Steve Scalise, a Republican, was shot in 2017 while he and other Republican members of Congress were practicing baseball in preparation for the annual Congressional baseball game. He remains partially disabled.

While the news of an assassination attempt on former President Trump came as a shock, it also didn’t really come as a shock. So many people have been saying for a while that they expected someone would take him out, particularly in this very volatile political environment we have been living in for some time — some take it as far back as Watergate.

Over the coming days, there will be lots of blame for how this could happen.

• From a security standpoint, how did the secret service and other law enforcement allow a shooter to get on top of the building where he shot the former President from?

• What were the shooter’s motives?

• How did we reach a point in our country that a 20-year old young man decided to take a shot at a former President who is now also running for President again?

Scapegoats and conspiracy theories will emerge. Hopefully some facts will too.

But in these first 24 hours after Trump was shot, the consensus I am hearing from people across the political spectrum is that we need to tone down the rhetoric.

Our nation seems as divided as ever. Yet, we must stop vilifying people simply because they have a difference of opinion. And that means ending all elements of cancel culture as well. We need to learn to live with one another, despite our differences. That’s the only way democracy can survive. That’s also the only way to avoid war. We express our differences at the ballot box, not with bullets and bombs — or even fists.

We should prefer fighting on ballots, rather than on battlefields, but if we can’t do with the first option, the latter will come to pass.

Human beings, by nature, are tribal. We are also all fallen creatures. Good and evil runs through every human heart. We can be easily moved and motivated to say things and do things that are not our best — and that’s to say it politely.

One of the key motivating factors that pushes us in dreadful directions is fear.

Look at the past 25 years of history alone for examples. What has been the key emotion that has driven our eyeballs to nonstop news coverage? Fear.

Fear of Terrorism.

Fear of Muslims.

Fear of Anthrax.

Fear of a Recession.

Fear of Big Government.

Fear of Guns.

Fear of Climate Change.

Fear of a Virus.

Fear of the End of Democracy.

Fear of Republicans.

Fear of Democrats.

Fear of Immigrants.

Fear of Trump.

Fear of Project 2025.

The list goes on and will go on…

Is it true that some fears are legitimate? Absolutely.

But the challenge for us is to separate legitimate things to fear from ones we either create in our heads or in which others use to keep us in a fear mentality.

Perhaps after a little reflection from his near-death experience yesterday, former President Trump had an epiphany, which he shared with the rest of the world today in his post that said: “We will fear not but instead remain resilient in our Faith and Defiant in the face of Wickedness.”

That mindset of being fearless is what gives one the ability to be resilient.

Trump didn’t stay on the floor like a victim after being shot. He also didn’t stay hidden behind the secret service who were trying to protect him.

He got up in defiance — with resilience — and stuck his head out to let the crowd see him, pumped his fist and chanted “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

This was almost as shocking as the shot itself.

I told someone after: “His reaction was amazing.” They responded: “It’s Trump. What did you expect?”

Today, that same man told us not to let this incident instill us with fear, but rather to make us resilient. Like him or not, there’s a reason why Trump is Trump. He might have billions of dollars, but he’s also got the mindset of persistence. No matter what they do or say about him, he keeps moving forward. The man is a machine.

***

Fear is what is constantly rattling at most of us.

We each need a stronger mindset to block out the noise. We must first start by limiting our inputs. We need to learn to stay away from watching or listening to so much news, to constantly have our phones buzzing with text alerts, or even to have to constantly check in on social media.

We are a nation of nervous wrecks. And that allows so many politicians, celebrities, and pundits to use fear to scare us to marching in a direction they want to see us go.

When enough people get scared and talk to others through the anonymity of computer screens or smart phones, it can become easier to be radicalized.

I don’t know every motivation behind the 20-year-old young man that took a shot at Trump and killed at least one attendee at his rally, but we have to ask: what drives someone to get to that point where they feel like the only thing left for them in life is to kill someone else? And much less, to kill a public figure or wish death upon someone because they have a different opinion?

I don’t have those answers and we may never fully know what was in the heart of this young man. The real tragedy here is what happened to him — his dead, lifeless body laying alone on top of a building, while a crowd below scrambles in fear.

How did he get there?

I don’t know why he went down that path. But I wish he could have find stillness.

The good news is that it’s not too late for us, if we are reading this. I wish, despite the storms surrounding so many of us, that we can be steady in the midst of them.

In 1654, Blaise Pascal said that “all of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

He said that in 1654. That’s two hundred years before the incandescent lightbulb.

In 2024, it’s almost impossible to sit quietly in a room alone. We have to turn a lot off. The TV. The radio. The smart phone. No podcasts. No music. No nothing. And then have time alone and just think. Meditate. Pray. Whatever.

How long can you do that? With the phone totally off, uninterrupted by someone else, even a doorbell?

There’s so much spinning around us these days.

In his book, Stillness is the Key, author Ryan Holiday says, in this digital age, “we are always reachable, which means that arguments and updates are never far away. The news bombards us with one crisis after another on every screen we own — of which there are many.”

As much as every vote matters, in other ways, very little of what goes on in the White House, Congress, or via a Supreme Court decision actually affects your life. Sure, maybe we are taxed a little more or a little less. Maybe a regulatory rule makes doing business harder. Maybe government spending devalues the dollar. But overall, the system works and irons itself out. Overall, life in the United States of America — is not perfect and it isn’t always fair — but it is pretty f-ing great compared to almost all of history and all of geography.

20-year olds may not understand this. They have come to expect so much due to the prosperity they were born into.

There is certainly a huge expectation gap — from what we were promised for the time and treasure we spent on a college degree. The investments we have made in so many things may not be paying off as much as we hoped.

But life is still pretty f-ing great. There is opportunity for anyone looking. The American Dream is not dead. It’s alive and well for those who are willing to humble themselves and do whatever is necessary to move forward.

Life may not be as great as you want it to be right now. But it certainly isn’t as horrible as some may have come to believe.

When life throws us challenges, that’s the opportunity for us to find our strength. It’s not the time to resort to bullets or bombs — or even insults — against others.

It’s not the time to defeat ourselves.

That shooter might have aimed to defeat Trump — or plunge America into chaos. But he defeated only himself.

There are a lot of mental health challenges going on in our country and in our world, perhaps like never before. It’s almost ironic given we are living in the most prosperous time in history.

But the fears we are being fed are telling us lies that are leading us down dark paths.

No matter whether or not you agree with me that life is pretty great right now and that we should not be searching for others to blame for our problems, perhaps you can consider something else.

Ryan Holiday tells us: “Whatever you face, whatever you’re doing will require, first and foremost, that you don’t defeat yourself. That you don’t make it harder by overthinking, by needless doubts, or by second-guessing. That space between your ears — that’s yours. You don’t just have to control what gets in, you also have to control what goes on in there.”

We should all personally apply that to ourselves. But I also think we can apply that to our political rhetoric. Whatever our nation is facing, whatever struggles are going on in the country, don’t make it harder by thinking too hard about it.

Don’t make it harder by second guessing the motivations of others.

The space between “us” and “them” really isn’t that large.

Don’t be part of making the gulf any larger. In fact, let’s each challenge ourselves to tone down the rhetoric and find ways to get a long with those who may not see the world the same way as us. There is so much more that unites us than divides us. Find those points. Maybe it’s travel, sports, music, a movie, or book.

Let’s find stillness within ourselves and within our nation. It’s well past time.

***

The first step is to find that stillness within ourselves. I encourage you to join us now, in the months of July and August, as we have taken up the book Stillness Is The Key by Ryan Holiday, as part of the Fearless Journeys book club. I encourage you to read it and I invite you to join our Fearless Journeys book club newsletter (subscribe for free here) to receive short summaries from the book each week.