January 21, 2021: I Know Exactly How You Feel

A male friend posted yesterday that (in his opinion), no matter how woke they might be, American men probably did not grasp quite how American women were feeling about Kamala Harris being the first woman elected to national executive office.

It brought me up a bit short. I mean, there’s the obvious problem of Categories That Are Too Large, as if all American women are feeling the same way, when we know there are some who are not excited about Democrats, or about Harris in particular, or…. I could go on here for a long time. We know some American women are racist, misogynist, anti-lawyer, anti-prosecutor, anti-Californian…. I’m not being flip. I’m saying that “American women” are not a bloc of feelings.

(Alex Wong, Getty Images)

And I was also thinking (spoiler: obvious thoughts coming!) that even amongst women who were rejoicing, white women don’t quite grasp how Black women are feeling, and those of us who aren’t of Southeast Asian ancestry likely don’t quite grasp the feelings of those who are. Right? And those who have wonderful, blended families, with step-relatives they don’t refer to as “step-“ anything, probably feel something the rest of us don’t.

For that matter, on the guy side, guys who aren’t Second Gentlemen probably don’t quite grasp what Doug Emhoff is feeling. Meaning, all guys. And so forth. None of us quite grasp how anybody else is feeling -which is probably why it is so deeply annoying when someone says, “I know just how you feel,” and you know for sure and certain that they don’t.

And still we say it. It’s so hard not to.

I sent a condolence card to an old colleague who just lost his wife to Alzheimer’s. I haven’t lost a spouse at all, let alone to Alzheimer’s, but my mom died of it three years ago, and what surprised me at the time was that even though I had “lost” her years before she died, and had been hoping for her release, I was devastated when it finally happened. I didn’t tell the old colleague I knew just how he felt, but I thought that I might, possibly, know a little bit of it.

Long ago, another former colleague got fired. It was news in the industry, though by then we were working for different companies. I knew much more than I should have about what had happened, and I knew that he probably deserved it, and I knew - because we had been friends, (and then had been rivals, and then had been competitors) - that he had come to hate his job.

So I sent him a note, and I said, “I have no idea how you are feeling right now. But if you told me you were crushed, or if you told me you were relieved, or if you told me you were exultant, I would understand why.”  And he said yes, he was feeling all those things, and we went back to being friends.

So I don’t know how you are feeling today, but I will say that yesterday was a really bright moment for me, for many reasons, and I hope you get several moments that feel just as good to you.