"The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself" -Franklin Delano Roosevelt

"Playing the clown is not an easy task.  Clowns, I have come to believe, are placed upon the earth solely to fill the needs of others, while running perilously close to 'empty' themselves."  -Flavia de Luce

Flavia is the heroine of a series of kids books by author Alan Bradley, so it's not terribly deep stuff.  But it's well done and this quote gets at an essential truth about human beings.  That is that we have a finite amount of energy and it needs to be refilled on a regular basis.  If it isn't, we put ourselves in danger.

An internet friend of mine from DBB, bugman222, asked this morning, in relation to the U.S. election results,

"How do we even pretend like this is important right now?
I’m trying. I really am. I NEED something like this game to take my mind off all the darkness and uncertainty that is everywhere right now. I’m just not sure I have it in me."

I feel for bugman.  I have been asking myself the same questions this morning.  It's an awful day for our country.  But to try to answer bugman's question, I think we don't even try to pretend like it (basketball) is important.  It's not.  It never was.  It's a game.  I think what we need to do is to recognize that basketball, like a clown, fills us up.  It helps us to be whole so that we can face the horror of the world, no matter what that means.  Our job is to enjoy what it gives us with awareness that we still have to face the horror.  

I believe that too many people in this country walk around every day with unmet needs. They are "perilously close to 'empty'".  When a person does this, it can cause them to feel vulnerable.  Over time, those feelings of vulnerability wear on a person.  Most people look for anything that will make those feelings go away.  I think Donald Trump knows all of this and tapped into those feelings.  All the crazy things he says are designed to cause fear (such as the idea that all Mexican immigrants are rapists).  Then all he has to do is convince people that he'll save them (build a wall) and they flock to him.

By watching basketball, we fill ourselves back up and reduce or remove the need for a person like Trump to save us.  Since the only person we can ever really change is ourself, then this is the definition of responsibility.