On Coping

      According to the dictionary, to cope means “to struggle or contend, especially on fairly even terms or with some degree of success.” This, in my mind, makes coping a very good skill to refine, and it is without doubt a learned skill. No one comes into life knowing how to cope, and without coping skills, we meet a lot of difficult situations with energetic push-back or noisy shoving, which may not end in any sort of reasonable outcomes. People who cannot--- or will not--- cope often engage in lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth!

Unsettling and often unexpected encounters...

Today’s unsettling and often unexpected encounters, especially at the national level, ask the best efforts of reasonable folks to try to come to the best outcomes that confront us. Hence, coping with strange, often surreal situations, becomes necessary. Consider this: Who wants to be upset all the time? Who wants to engage in constant resistance that may produce nothing but more to resist? What about another “take” on what lies ahead from reasoning minds that may ferret out solutions that may break through a good, reasoning process?

"Rule of the people"...

No one wants to feel defeated by sets upon sets of bewildering situations. No citizen wants to feel that he or she has little to say about leadership gone crazy. In fact as good citizens in a country that celebrates democracy, or “rule of the people,” none of us should be willing to be misled. We all have good, inventive minds that know how to cooperate with other good, inventive minds, and we probably know more about coping than we think we do.

No need to throw up our hands in despair over another misguided blast out of left field! Let’s get busy and cope!

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