Andrew Crighton

News Editor

The days following the inauguration of Donald Trump as our 45th president have been…eventful. To say that I believe our country has made a mistake is an understatement; but conventional politics is not what I want this piece of writing to be about.

For me, this is a way to organize and make sense of the myriad of thoughts swirling in my mind.

Trump was sworn in at approximately 10 a.m. on Friday morning, and the rest of my day was spent in class, and then sitting quietly transitioning between anger, disbelief and depression over and over again.

The first thing that I made sense of was something I would have sooner died than believe only a week ago.

The election of Donald Trump has given me the truest understanding of empathy I have ever known. In 2004, long before I could vote, I remember the reactions of my family and peers while living in Mountain Home, Idaho when Barack Obama was elected.

Utter revolt, calls for impeachment (before he was even sworn in) and a lot of remarks about the evils of socialism and how he was secretly a Muslim trying to destroy us.

I never gave any credit to these critiques. As far as I was concerned they were baseless, a knee jerk response to fear.

As I sat and thought about the implications of what this election would mean for me and the people I share this planet with, I realized that I was afraid.

No different than from those people eight years ago, I was panicking over something that probably would make no difference in the course of history. Even realizing that I couldn’t explain why I was still angry, afraid and lost as to what to do.

While I made ever more and more comparisons to the similarities between my situation and those that happened in the past, the same sentence kept repeating itself in my head.

“But surely, this is different…”

Even though there are similarities, there has to be some objective Truth to why my own fears are justified.

I have my reasons for why this election is different than those that occurred before.

The conservative pundits talk on the radio and my family and people I grew up with comment and post on social media, claiming that people who are ‘crying’ are just immature.

Even with my new understanding of empathy, I still have the conviction that this is different.

I know that there are Truths.

Some time ago I heard from an author, a NPR reporter or my mom – I don’t remember who – that the more educated you become the more you see the world in shades of grey.

I believe that; at face value anything can be good or bad but it is common sense that everything has more finesse than when you first examine it.

When you understand something in its entirety is when you can begin to find the Truths hidden within.

But the more you learn, the deeper you go, the larger the proportion of grey.

Finally you get to the point where there is no longer any black or white, only greys that are infinitesimally different from each other.

When there is no black or white, there are no truths, only opinions that are neither true or false.

Only one can be correct; either all opinions are based around some Truth or everything is only a different shade of grey.

Trying to decipher which it is, I find myself in a world becoming increasingly grey every day that passes.

When the entirety of the world around you shifts into monochrome it is easy to lose faith, and progressively harder to find hope.

So I will cling to my truths, until I find out which, if either, is true.