Today I'm celebrating the winning World Cup soccer team and their co-captain Megan Rapinoe. What happiness it was to see them win—under tremendous pressure—by welcoming that pressure and showing the world what women of grit and determination and talent can do.
The word hero isn't one I use everyday, but the country desperately needs heroes, and Megan Rapinoe is one. I watched her on television last night, and I saw part of the ticker-tape parade this morning, and on each occasion I loved her radiant joy in winning and her proud celebrating of the team and herself. I saw no smugness there, no misplaced self-satisfaction, hardly any ego. She's just telling it like it is. This is what women do. This is how women win. This is the way life should be for all of us.
How can we translate this joyous love of self, others, and country into a meaningful conversation about what's not changing and what desperately needs to change? We have a president who seems bitter about everything, whose failures are always someone else's fault, whose very presence on the world's stage casts a pall that, like an undertow, pulls the rest of us down.
It's like watching split screen TV: his dark irascibility and wrath vs. the light and joy that Rapinoe and her teammates represent. It is our country's dilemma writ large. Shall we welcome the challenges and accept whatever comes with joy, or cower in bitterness, blame, and hate? Given those parameters it would seem an easy choice but Trump is formidable. Today, however, Megan rules. Away with the darkness; I'm joining the ladies.
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