“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” ~John F. Kennedy
Full disclosure: I am a U.S. citizen who has lived in Canada since 1996, and I have already cast my absentee ballot.
Are you as tired of the U.S. Presidential election as I am?
Silly question.
Of course you are. We ALL are. The media cycles and talking heads, the accusations and innuendos, the clenched fists and pointed fingers.
Politics is the newest reality show, with theatrics the norm: a Jerry Springer appeal-to-the-lowest-common-denominator voyeurism for the intellectually void, and a selling of the soul in the name of certainty or celebrity.
After a lifetime of empathetic attention to others—their body language, their choice of words, when they speak and under what circumstances, and more—when I walk into a home, or a store, or an office, I am aware of and (most times) able to feel and put a name to the collective “energy” I’m picking up. And I’m pretty accurate.
Let me tell you: The energy in the United States sucks right now. Not that there aren’t positive pockets, but the collective is palpably angry. A tinder box.
There is a collective energy that has seeped into the fabric of the U.S. itself. I feel it in the gas station in northern New York State where I stop to fill up my tank; in the coffee shop in Pennsylvania where I buy a donut; on the streets in Baltimore where I’ve headed for my birthday. The weekend before the election.
What was I thinking…?
But as you read this I will be back in a car, leaving a nation divided, driving home to Toronto, Canada, where diversity is celebrated in a nation proud of its immigrant heritage, with free health care, and courtesy for all. I am grateful I have the legal right to do that, and sad that I feel relief leaving my country of birth.
God bless and save the next President of the United States, regardless of which candidate wins.
He or she will have the hardest job in the world, and their decisions will affect the world, a world that awaits the result of Tuesday’s election.
And God bless and save the America I used to know from the fear-filled hate-mongering this election campaign intravenously force-fed the world.
My wish: That we would decide—each of us, individually—to be part of a solution rather than the problem, by practicing the Golden Rule.
It used to work well.
It still can.
At least, for those who would rather turn off the never-ending vitriolic media spin and consider the larger conversation: humanity’s collective survival.
That is, if you’re brave enough to look to the future, and release the need to be right about the past.
