This isn’t the “make a difference” post I’d originally planned for this week, but as I drove to work on Wednesday morning, I began thinking about the upcoming presidential election, and I decided to table the post I’d been working on and post about love instead.
On Tuesday, we will vote for our next president… at least, I hope readers are planning to vote. This has been the most emotionally charged campaign I have ever seen. Many of us are so distressed that there is a very real temptation not to vote. Please, don’t give up. Our right to vote is a precious thing that many people have been denied. Vote for the lesser of two evils or a third party candidate, or write in a vote… but whatever you do, please vote because you are fortunate enough to have a voice in who will run our country. And remember, while choosing not to vote may seem like a way of saying you are fed up with the choices offered to you, it can also be read as “I don’t care.”
Please care enough to vote.
Care because we have one of the two largest economies in the world. Care because our military spending far outpaces that of any other country. Care because our country is one of the top greenhouse gas emitters in the world. Care because the U.S. is one of the most charitable nations on earth. Our choice of president influences not just our own country but the entire world.
And when you vote, please don’t vote out of anger or hatred or fear. Anger is a valid emotion. It can motivate us to do good things, but I don’t believe it should be our primary source of motivation. I believe that we are our best selves and make our wisest decisions when we are motivated by love.
Don’t vote for candidate X because you are afraid of what this country is becoming or for candidate Y because you are afraid of what that person will do in power. Vote for the candidate who best models a wise and loving spirit, even if you believe that no candidate is particularly good at modeling that.
On Wednesday, when the dust has settled, we will know who our next president will be (barring a repeat of the 2000 election). Choose love in the aftermath.
Your candidate may not win. It may feel like the end of the world. You may be angry with the people who supported the winning candidate. Were they blind? Are they evil? You might be afraid for what our next president may do. Of course they will have a lot of power, and with such power, they could indeed do horrible things.
Choose to love anyway.
Or your candidate may win. You may be relieved that the nation did not swing over to the dark side. You may want to crow a bit about how evil did not triumph, how there were not, in fact, enough idiots in this country to put That Person in office.
If your candidate wins, choose to love the “idiots” whose candidate lost.
I’m not saying that it’s wrong to feel strongly about this election. I have very strong opinions about who should win. I’m not saying it’s wrong to express those opinions, although I’m choosing not to openly endorse a candidate in this post. I think it’s normal to feel some fear and anger, given what we’ve seen during this campaign season. But I believe that, no matter how powerful our president may be, our nation will ultimately stand or fall based on whether we choose to be people who act out of love.
You’ve almost certainly seen this commercial before, but it’s worth watching again. It may be fiction, but I believe that if we are as loving as this character, we will change the world for the better.
4 replies on “Make a Difference: Choose Love”
Thank you so much for this post, Kate. It’s so needed. Simply loving sounds simplistic, and maybe it is. But it can change the world.
Thank you, Mary!
Thanks, Kate.
Actually, I hadn’t seen that commercial before. While I tend to be pretty jaded and not very susceptible to tugging at the heart strings, I do believe in what that commercial has to say. It delivers the message quite beautifully.
My hope for this election is the following: whatever the outcome, I pray people do not harden their hearts and let their wounded pride get in the way of working together with those who may not share their political ideology. This has been, in the opinion of many, a growing and serious problem amongst our legislators in the past decade, or so. We must come together to work for the good of the country. Put pride aside.
I completely agree that, whoever wins, we must learn to work together. Last month I heard former Minnesota governor Arne Carlson speak about how important it is that our leaders relearn to reach across the aisle and make compromises in order to accomplish things. I hope that we will start to hear more people talk like that.