By Kimberly Mayer, Journal contributor

“Hang onto your hat, hang onto your hope and wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.”

E.B. White

One day there will be a word for what we went through recently, in this election. Suffice it to say the presidential debate on June 27 did us all in. Our president was getting on in years, and so it was gloom and doom time amongst friends on island. Nevertheless, Democrats marched in the 4th of July parade on island without a name on their signs. Marching with messages, marching through the morning.

We were on our own, it seemed.

Everyone I know was practicing self-care. I began asking others, “What did you do to pull yourself through?” Walking, birding, kayaking, baking. Listening to more music, seeing more films, and reading more books than ever. What more can one do? Working remotely at our home, our daughter paddle boarded off toward the horizon at the end of every day. It seemed endless. One dear friend wonders, “I am trying to think, did I cope?”

I found my way, as I often do in times of trouble, to the labyrinth at St. David’s Episcopal Church in Friday Harbor. Labyrinths are designed for walking meditation and have been practiced for thousands of years, long before Christianity. I can’t explain why but it works. Walking a labyrinth is mindfulness that looks mindless. There is only one path to follow from the outside to the center and back out again. No decisions, no wrong turns possible. You think you’re getting there, and you’re not. Just when you are spinning further away, suddenly you are there. Much like life.

And just like that, the winds changed and the tides turned and everything flipped when Joe Biden gave his seat in the upcoming election to his second in command, Kamala Harris. And soon a Vice Presidential candidate on top of all that. Now we’re all shining brightly and experiencing a lightness of being and unbridled joy.

Parade, anyone?!