WWTD (What Would Tim Do?)
For the past eight years, I have been looking over my shoulder, watching my back with strangers, and keeping a very low profile anywhere Trump signs were proliferating or churches were putting themselves out front and center.
The world felt dangerous — evangelicals wanted to control every aspect of our lives, Republicans had no respect for ideas other than their own, violence and lies and cruelty were championed. And if you were a Democrat? It felt, except for certain places, like you were a Jew trying to keep a very low profile in 1933 Germany.
So it was very much a living in fear situation. I assumed that all people who were Trumpers (or as I referred to them, StormTrumpers) were lost souls who were monstrous. And if I didn’t KNOW you were a Democrat, I assumed you were One Of Them.
And then along comes Tim Walz.
With Kamala Harris, he has upended my ideas about a lot of things: What Midwesterners are like. What Christians are like. What White men were likely to be. The idea that kindness was spat upon unless it was to your own tribe. And on, and on…
Tim Walz is an emotional alchemist for me, turning fear and mistrust into curiosity and kindness toward people I don’t know. Taking my insularity and tamping it down, gentling its edges, so that strangers can once more be, at least possibly, just Other People like me.
And it’s a good way to softly, lightly let people know I *am* a Democrat and want change in the country, without having to pull out my own sword of defense.
The first example was when a woman (I can’t say “old woman” anymore; I’m 70!) was struggling with her bags outside our local Price Chopper. I offered to help, and then to take her cart back to the corral for her. She said, puzzled, “Why would you do that?” And I smiled and said, “Well I’m trying to live with WWTD.” And when she looked blank, I chuckled and said, “What Would Tim Do?”
She got it. She smiled and nodded.
Yes, maybe she is a Trumper. Maybe she is an evangelical who thinks that her worldview is the only righteous one and the rest of us are damned sinners.
But in that singular moment, she felt seen and I felt hope.
And so I can move on to the next small kindness. And the next. I can learn to put my fear aside. It’s not that I don’t believe we still have to fight for our future; we do.
But the more we show the other side what the world COULD look like when kindness and justice and cooperation and “all boats can rise” is the norm, the more likely it is that we will be able to bring that into reality.
And just as a scalpel and an MRI machine are two vastly different parts of a doctor’s arsenal of healing — but both are valuable — “What Would Tim Do?” can be as valuable a phrase to live by every day as “We Won’t Go Back.” Because each in their own way reminds you that the future can be a kinder, more joyous place to be.
