This election season seems to have been particularly
trying. In ways that I do not
remember. Of course, it also seems that
my memory is not what it used to be. Why
am I at the computer again?
Oh yes, this election has had and continues to have so much
energy, it is pulling people, squeezing out the hard, built up apathy and
inertia. A deluge of thoughts and
feelings are being thrown around flooding the thoughtfields. I am experiencing it like some serious
weather. A hurricane or a tornado of
sorts. Can’t get away, nowhere to hide,
hard to breathe. And it is a bit scary
and painful. Not sure what will be left
of my life when it is ‘over’.
I hear talk of choices, “If you do choose this, you are
actually choosing something (someone) else.”
“The choices both are horrible” (sometimes with one being more horrible
being thrown in). “One is dishonest, the
other uniformed, spewing all kinds of rhetoric without much of what is said
based in fact.” I hear it being said over and over by my friends, almost
everyone on facebook, the media and the comics I think are so funny.
I hear so much ‘they’.
They are this and they are that.
So who is they?
They is you. At least
to the other person.
In this time when the people who have risen to the top
(however it actually happened) is what we have to deal with, we get to ask why.
We feel so much more comfortable when it
is ‘their’ fault. However, what I know
to be true is that we are all a part of this, somehow.
I would like to consider this in a bit smaller context. If we were talking permaculture, I would be
saying consider this hyperlocally, or zone 1.
I am asking you to consider how you have been being during
this election season. How much listening
have you done? Actually listening for
the deeper fears – under all the stories of what is showing up ~ for all the
people you disagree with? How much
dialogue have you even considered.
I’m not even suggesting that dialogue is possible. I am curious if have you even tried offering empathy to those who are saying and doing things that you really, really don't like? This is when it really matters, when we might really make a difference, when we can discover how committed to understanding, compassion and nonviolence we really are.
How much of the name calling, forcing your opinion as truth,
hoping to drive the outcome you want, have you engaged in?
It seems so easy this time.
So obvious that ‘they’ are doing it.
I wonder if you might take a breath and see if you can notice when you
are ‘doing it’.
In this election, I wonder if we all have lost a bit of our
own compassion, our own values, our own open-heartedness.
For me, that is a choice.
And if you choose to lose this in yourself, what is (has been) the cost?
