So it's happening

Would you believe it if I told you that I had a whole post celebrating Clinton's victory ready to publish for today? Yesterday, Meenal sent me a meme she created for Time Chor based on the assumption that shit would, in fact, not hit the fan this morning. But looks like neither of us get to share what we'd prepared in advance. I still can't believe this happened. Today is a very crucial day in the history of the world.

Last month, Shane and I traveled to Brighton to celebrate my birthday and on our return, we both wrote two separate posts documenting our fun little holiday. However, when we got chatting last night, we realised that neither of us remembered to mention a very strange event that took place at the SeaLife museum. We were there, watching a shark show, after which, a girl grabbed Shane's ass. Yep, someone actually grabbed my husband's ass right in front of my eyes. I'm aware that a lot of people are conditioned to find such an event amusing. After all, we live in a world where people talk freely about grabbing women by their pussies. However, I must say that seeing someone grab my husband's ass was not amusing to me in the least. I was mortified and ready to engage with this person when I noticed two things. 1) An understanding smile had replaced Shane's confused expression and 2) this girl in question seemed to be suffering from an uncontrollable tic. A moment later it became clear to me that she had some terrible condition that caused her momentary losses of control over her mental faculties. She was, in fact, anxious to see Shane's reaction. Although I couldn't bring myself to smile at her, he did. He did it to show her that it was okay, that he understood. And weirdly enough, she didn't seem relieved or pleased at the realisation.

I walked away from that scene with the knowledge that my husband had confused her with his reaction (or the lack of it). It made me think about how we're all hard-wired to expect certain outcomes in life, only to feel disappointed when things don't turn out that way, even if they do turn out for the best. Every single one of us does this.

When Britain shocked the world with Brexit, we read about all the people who woke up on the morning of the results to find their leader reneging on the promises they made during the campaign. Some were heard asking - "What the hell did I do with my vote?". People realised that promises were not going to be kept and expectations got shattered.

This morning, I woke up to read that Clinton had won the popular vote but still lost the election. That's the saddest thing that I've read all day. I read new tweets by supporters of the winning party that they shall be "silent no more" and can finally come out and say how they were supporters all along. I read how people from my own country were laughing at the state of affairs and challenging America to try and hold on to the status of a Global superpower. I saw how pathetic it was that people didn't realise how we were all in this together, how we were all going to get affected by the turn of events. And still, the fact that the candidate who won the popular vote lost the election was the saddest thing I read today.

Now once again, people have expectations. People expect a wall to be built. They expect xenophobia to grow and bullies to be raised. They expect respect for women to altogether disappear and wars to be fought. And for the first time, I hope that all these expectations are crushed. I hope that all of that was just "talk" and propaganda to gain votes, to win an election. I truly hope that nothing bad happens in the next four years, after which it might be possible to rectify the mistake of making the entire world tip-toe around a minefield.

To hope and peace.