Tag Archives: choices

My Election Reflection

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This is not going to be my most popular post.

Like most things I write about, I expect some people will totally get where I’m coming from, while others won’t get me at all. That’s one of the beautiful things about life–we’re not all cut from the same cloth. How terribly boring and stagnant it would be if we were.

I once wrote that this never was nor will be a blog about politics. I hope you’ll forgive me for making an exception during this tumultuous time.

For well over a year, I’ve followed the course of events that led up to this most recent presidential election. I watched the debates, read countless articles and took in the some of the sound bytes shared on television and social media. My family, friends and I discussed our thoughts, beliefs and reactions when it came to the various candidates. I voted in my party’s primary. And I voted in the general election, as I have done every year since I turned eighteen.

My candidate for president lost. Actually, she was my second choice. She might have even fallen to third or fourth place if any of the parties had put up more candidates worth considering.

But it’s hardly the first time I’ve voted for the losing candidate. Hell, my presidential choices have lost more elections than won, which makes me think, maybe it’s me, maybe I jinx them. But whatever, I digress.

My vote was primarily based on the positivity, and on what I believed to be the more down to earth and inclusive platform, of one candidate, versus what I saw as the childish, petty, mean-spirited–sometimes even vicious–and uninformed positions voiced by the other candidate. I voted with both my head and my heart. And I voted for the person I thought would be the better leader for all of us, not just me personally.

So my candidate lost, and frankly, I’m not happy about it (OK, that’s an understatement). Like anyone who feels justified in her beliefs and feelings, and like anyone who has suffered a loss, I need a little time to process and heal.

But I’m not being given that time. My Facebook newsfeed is filled with gloating posts (ha ha, go ahead and move to Canada, see if we care) and lectures on how “the nation has spoken” and how I need to grow up, unite and sing kumbaya for the president-elect–the very man who has spent nearly a year and a half pitting us against one another.

I’m just not prepared to do that just yet. And, depending on what he does going forward, I may never get behind him.

That is my choice and my right as an American.

Look, for eight years I’ve watched, read and listened to hate-filled, anti-Obama rhetoric, including the place of birth falsehoods repeatedly voiced by our current president-elect. Their hostility, animosity and loathing bothered me, but frankly the Obama-haters were entitled to their opinion, and I am a firm believer in our First Amendment right of freedom of speech. Never once did I even anonymously jump into one of those online discussions and tell them to shut the f**k up. I just took the high road and didn’t engage with them.

Why can’t I, and the rest of the pro-Hillary and/or anti-Trump voters, be afforded the same leeway?

No, we’re being told that election protesters should be jailed (which, for those who are destroying property or engaging in physical violence, I would agree) and that we need to get over it or be viewed as unpatriotic (as if the vile name calling and rants done during the Obama administration was patriotic?). We are being told to put our rights on hold for at least the next four years.

Not only am I not prepared to do that, I refuse.

Sure, I am terribly unhappy with the candidate who won this election. I have been repulsed by his foul attitude towards women, his intolerance towards non-Caucasians, his mockery of those with physical challenges, and his flippant references promoting violence to those who didn’t agree with him throughout his campaign. I am actually embarrassed that he won.

But I’m not going to pin blanket, puerile labels on our president-elect either. And I’m not going to engage in pointless discussions where ideals and facts dissolve into hostile accusations and derisive put downs.

Just don’t count on me to simply fall in line with where this administration might lead us. Or tell me that my only other alternative is to move to Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal or Mexico City. While you won’t find me standing in the streets shouting slogans, you also won’t find me passively accepting policy decisions that go against my values.  

Like I said in the beginning, it’s a beautiful thing that we’re not all cut from the same cloth. I simply won’t stand for policies that will rip us apart, either.

What Do You Think?

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Came across this Henry Ford quote recently that I love, love, love:

“Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.”

Now, you might say, “Come on, Mary Anne–I think all the time! In fact, I can’t ever seem to stop thinking! I think even when I’m asleep! I think that not thinking is wa-a-a-a-a-y more difficult than thinking!”

Au contraire, mon frère, and I know this from personal experience. What swims around in our brains 99 percent of the time are memories, worries, ruminations, replays, reactions and judgments (of ourselves, as well as of others). They’re sound bytes and flashbacks. We can call them thoughts–but they don’t constitute thinking.

What happens most of the time between our ears is a mental cacophony.

As seen in Rodin’s famous sculpture, thinking requires effort. It requires concentration. Just look at his face. That ‘s thinking.

Real thinking is active, not passive. Real thinking is purposeful.

What’s more, real thinking is almost always more positive and productive than the unchecked babble that goes on  in our heads much of the time. Real thinking solves and creates. It empowers us.

Take, for example, when something someone says to us hurts, whether it’s a romantic partner, a family member,  a boss or whomever. Most of us lick that wound over and over until it grows and even gets infected. We replay the words, and the subsequent pain, so repeatedly that they become etched in our memory for future playback, a permanent part of the mental chatter that consumes most of our thoughts.

Now what if, instead of reacting to the words we perceived as hurtful, instead of letting those words upset, anger or sadden us, we chose a different reaction? What if we mentally stepped back, thought “Well, now that wasn’t very nice!” and then went on to not let it affect the rest of our day? Wouldn’t being able to do that feel so much better?

I actually managed to accomplish that recently, sort of, with what I consider a great deal of success. My life partner John, who means more to me than 99.9 percent of the rest of the world, said something that I felt was unkind and unnecessary. My eyes teared and I did say, “You just crossed the line,” but that’s all I said about it.

Next day when I awoke, I realized I had a choice. I could stay hurt and angry with him and drag those feelings around with me like a ball and chain, throwing off negative vibes that would not only impact me  but everyone else within striking distance. I could stoke that hurt like an old coal stove by reliving what he’d said, damn him, and letting my reaction to those words suck the oxygen right out of me…or I could choose to be happy. Choose to make it a great day. Choose, if not to forgive just yet, then at least not let what was said yesterday become the focal point of my today

What a difference such a choice made. And choosing is, or at least can be, a very empowering form of thinking.

As has been frequently said, most of us spend more time planning their vacations than our lives, or how we can contribute to or make a positive impact on the world.

Heck, many people even spend more time planning a meal, right? Case in point: we’ll spend days planning and prepping for Thanksgiving dinner, and were seconds giving thanks. What’s up with that?

And it’s not like we give ourselves much time or space for thinking–instead we cram our days and nights with doingness and/or mindless entertainment. I’m as guilty of that as the next guy. It’s a lot easier to play two dozen Words with Friends games simultaneously or watch “Rizzoli and Isles” than to write a blog post, or deeply think about how I want my next (hopefully) 20 some-odd years on earth to play out.

I wonder about the Rodin sculpture. Is the man weighing the pros and cons of a huge decision that he needs to make? Or is he mentally working on an intricate math problem, or how to bring an invention to fruition, or about some philosophical conundrum about the nature of mankind or the meaning of life?

Whatever it is he’s thinking about, I’m convinced the world would be a better place if a lot more of us did that, too. If we thought before we spoke. Or thought before we react. Or thought about what kind of impact we’d like to make while we’re alive or what kind of legacy we want to leave when our earthly time is through.

And we can’t do that if our eyes are constantly glued to a smartphone, computer screen or television. Our best thinking is done in nature…or in silence…or while listening to certain types of music…or, for those who believe in its power, while praying.

I think, if more of us devoted more time to purposeful thought, the news media would find it a lot more difficult to come up with their endless stream of horrendous and worrisome stories to shine their spotlights on.

And wouldn’t that be a wonderful world?

Think about it.

 

Chance of Fulfillment, 50 Percent

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My partner John owns a seasonal business, a marina, bait store and lodging in Henderson Harbor, New York, on Lake Ontario. Like most, if not all, seasonal businesses, we are weather-driven–ours is busier than all get out when the weather graces us with beautiful, sunny days, and deader than the proverbial doornail when cold, wet and windy weather blows in.

But sometimes the forecast, not the actual weather, does more harm to Henderson Harbor’s businesses than good.

Take this morning as I write this. According to both local meteorologist Joe Blow and weather.com, today was supposed to entirely suck.  Yet when I glance up from my keyboard to look out the window, I see a hazy but sunny sky, and a calmly rippling denim blue bay of water.

And I wonder, how many people based their plans for today on the forecast, not the weather?

Not everyone, come to find out. But my guess is business would have been much better if the forecast had accurately reflected a pleasant Saturday morning, followed by some rain in the afternoon, rather than an entire day of rain and occasional thunderstorms. So much for triple Doppler.

This made me think about life in general, and the doom and gloom we often see forecast in our daily news. It can be so easy to get caught up in that, to postpone treating ourselves for fear we won’t have enough when the economy collapses, or to decide not pursue dreams because they may be risky.

Then we look back, unlike the young couple in a current Suburu television commercial, and see how we decided to take the safe path rather than the adventurous one when we came to that fork in the road. That we ended up buying pants in Walmart instead of camping out under the stars.

I have a nephew who has an idea for a business he wants to launch. I’m quite certain other friends and family members would tell him it’s a pipe dream, but not me. I’d rather see him try and fail than not try at all. In truth, I hope he succeeds beyond his wildest dreams, and keeps his dear old aunt in mind once he’s rich and famous.

But yes, I do wish I had taken Robert Frost’s “road less traveled by” when I was younger. I had started to, putting myself through college with part time jobs and loans…but upon graduation, faced with all that debt, I grabbed hold of the first steady paycheck I could find.  Not at all the future that the young me had planned.

And though I certainly don’t regret the people I’ve met, places I’ve seen and many of the experiences I’ve had along the road I did choose, there’s this small, persistent voice inside me that still urges me to go for something bigger and more fulfilling.

Do you hear that voice, too? Not mine, of course, but your own, wondering aloud if you could still pursue an old dream, a calling, or even just a long lost pastime?

If so, that voice is there for a reason. And my guess is that it’s a more reliable indicator of how we should live out the remainder of our lives than triple Doppler. Or meteorologist Joe Blow for that matter.