Managing your expectations.
As the curtain closes on the midterm elections (and my college midterms!), I wanted to write a reflection piece on a topic I’ve been mulling over for a while - the balance between optimism and reality. Let me start off with a story.
In between classes, my classmates and I like to hang out in the graduate lounge at our school, usually playing ping pong or discussing problem sets for various classes. Today, the atmosphere was a little different. Not only had we finished our first set of midterms, one of the most pivotal midterm elections were in place. As political scientists in training, we couldn’t NOT talk about it. If you know someone who won’t shut up about politics (or if you are that person), a few elections come back up regularly: O’Rourke, Gillum, and Abrams. These elections have been highly publicized - but for good reason, especially Beto O’Rourke’s. The man had energized liberal voters, not only in his deeply conservative state, but around the country. The conversations about his chances today went something like this:
”How do you think Beto’s gonna do tonight?”
”Fuck man, I really want him to beat Ted Cruz - but if I’m being real, I don’t think he will.”
It’s disheartening to be a realist. Nobody wants to hear that someone from your “team” isn’t gonna win - it creates an atmosphere of defeat. At the same time, it’s important to temper your expectations so that your view on the world isn’t dominated by idealistic fantasies. You can hear it in people’s voices too. When they’re talking about a best possible outcome (in any scenario, not just the elections), their voices are tinged with hope and passion and a million other happy emotions. But when they start speaking realistically, the energy of their voice and the energy of the people listening drop, smothered by a wet blanket.
It’s super important to internalize both sides of this. When you’re optimistic, you have hope. Hope for better grades, a better life, a better future is what gets you through all-nighters at the library or disgustingly long polling lines. But understand that not everything plays out perfectly and you should plan accordingly. Maybe you shouldn’t skip class because you expected to do well on that midterm. Or maybe that election isn’t completely safe and your efforts to canvass and phone bank can make an impact. My biggest fear is that optimists get stuck when something goes wrong, especially in politics. Some issues never seem to go away - repeated attacks on healthcare, the issue of racism, control over the internet, etc. What’s important is how we deal with the knocks - we do ourselves an injustice by giving up simply because things get difficult. O’Rourke 2020, anyone?
**A special note to people who vote third party: this is for you. I understand and respect that you are exercising your vote in a way that protests the two party system, but understand that the existing institutions and election rules make it practically impossible for anyone outside of the 2 main parties to win anything. Instead, place a higher value on your privilege to vote. Vote for a candidate from a main party that has the resources to win, but push for measures like election structure reform so that maybe one day, we can have an actual representative democracy.