Have A Nice Day
Adri,
It was the day after the presidential election and I was in the office. The vibes in the office were generally low. A coworker, we'll call him T, and I joked and laughed about whatever, unrelated to the election. A different coworker, we'll call her J, looked at us and gave us a scowl and asked “how could people laugh on such a day?”
Later in the day, I was talking, joking, laughing with a different co-worker, we'll call her G. We both had birthday's recently and were catching up. We laughed and as G walked away, J turned to me and asked, "What's your deal today?"
I responded that I too was disappointed in the election results, but I wasn’t going to let that ruin my day. She quipped back, "You're not a woman living in America, you'll never get it."
Was I in the wrong for not adhering to the funeral vibes in the office?
Have A Nice Day
p.s. If relevant, myself and T are white men, J is an asian woman, and G is a black woman.
Dear Have A Nice Day,
What a time to be alive. I appreciate your transparency, including the racial details—your choice to include them let’s me know that you know they aren’t immaterial to your question.
Before I begin, I do think “Am I wrong” as a question tends to be fraught. Human relationships don’t thrive on technicality, which is often what I think people are trying to get at with “Am I wrong, AITA” type questions. So—to answer your question in the most individualistic, anti-social way possible, no—no you do not have to observe the funeral vibe at the office. You can laugh, be jolly, wear bells. You know this, because you are more or less doing it with only mild social consequences. You don’t have to be somber, and your coworker gets to think you’re a jerk. YAY FREEDOM!
Giving you the benefit of the doubt though, maybe you are looking for more—a way to be more caring, more productive? First, I would throw a few questions back your way. Do you care about how you make people feel? Can you/do you want to make space for feelings other than your own? Do you want to be in positive/productive community, even when its messy and inconvenient?
Not sure how you would answer those. But what I will continue to scream into the void (s/o George Costanza, a real one) is that YOU KNOW WE’RE LIVING IN A SOCIETY, HERE! The day after a fraught election, yeah, it’s okay to be more subdued, to assess the vibes (terrible) and move accordingly, to give grace to your coworkers who are likely more materially impacted by this than you. To realize that while this may not feel like a big deal to you, others find it terrifying—you can push yourself to try to see it their way, to offer empathy even if you refuse to let this new reality impact your own. Maybe even pause and think, as a self described white man, how might your exuberance and joy be received by others on a day like that and is that what you are hoping to message to them?
I am, at my core, hopeful—in the way the brilliant Mariame Kaba describes hope—as a discipline, as something that is hard but necessary. Maybe that sort of hope (and a good amount of privilege) keeps you smiling, better able to roll with the punches than your coworker? Maybe it’s something else entirely. I don’t think its necessary to perform grief for others—but performing your own is not the same as respecting others, which requires very little of you.
Life does go on and the way grief manifests (and when) is different for different folks. Your reaction and that of your upset coworkers are both valid. Joy must exist alongside grief, civilization alongside barbarism. We contain and endure multitudes. But there is a way of honoring that, of making space, of supporting one another through it, if we care to.
We know the phrase “love is a verb.” So is friendship. So is community. So is care. So is empathy. These aren’t ideas—if you want to be someone who practices them, you will first need to commit to them—as values and actions. And if you don’t, you will have to satisfy yourself with being technically “right” but, perhaps, morally/socially wrong, a lot.
With care and hope for all of us,
Adri