Thank you!...following Election Day

 THANK YOU. To everyone. To everyone who showed up to vote. Today, I realized that this thanks was not previously present enough in me to say it out loud. 

Also, thank you. Thanks for changing people around me. You shook me up and you shook up people I love, some of whom I have also struggled with. Somehow, you shook us towards love. Words have come out of people I know that I never, in a million years, dreamed of hearing. It gives me a lump in my throat. 

I know ugly words have come up. But this is not the angle I am focusing on because, frankly, what I am focusing on is so much more powerful inside of my body at this moment in time. 

You shook us towards love by showing up. While I do care very much the outcome of the elections in terms of humanity on a national and universal scale, I don't "care" as much about who you voted for right now. Maybe I'll be pissed tomorrow about it, but right now, I don't. Why, you say? Who the hell is this person? Why would she say that she doesn't care? How dare she! I thought she was someone else. Unfriend. Unfollow. Door closed. 

Well, I was surprised, too. Shocked even. Who the hell have I become?

But, right now, I'm not shocked. 

Why don't I "care"? Because with every pulse of time that beats through my body, I feel that every single person who SHOWED UP to vote did so based on their own personal position in time and space, and with all sincerity. I really feel that they showed up, and somehow, somewhere, out of love. (Do you show up to things that you don't truly care about?) Maybe it's because one person voted "for" and another "against" a candidate. Maybe, for once in their lifetime, a voter felt recognized, heard. Maybe they were afraid of making the wrong decision for themselves, their families, others by not voting for one candidate over another. Maybe they or their ancestors are originally from another country in which a political party, who dictated them to death, was associated with the same exact candidate that others felt would lead the U.S. out of bigotry, hatred, divineness and (back?) towards liberty, freedom, and justice for all. Either way, you showed up for not just a democratic process, but THE democratic process of voting. And isn't that what is it all about in the end? I...think...so.

I feel like there is so much work to be done, but will there ever be no work to do? We are complicated animals. We have unresolved traumas that need some serious attention, accompanied by empathy and love.

If you stood in line, filled out and sent in an absentee ballot, or whatever you did, and you didn't stand in the way of anyone else doing the same, then I thank you. Your vote really, actually...matters to me. Gulp.

We have to do this more often. We have to meet each other and to voice ourselves more often. We have to talk. We cannot let other people say that we can't and that we shouldn't and tttoootttaaallllllyyy distract us from doing what is the whole point of it all. Because we should meet, show up, dialogue in a democratic way. It's good. Dialogue is necessary to getting through shit. The democratic process of voting IS a form of dialogue. And those who participated in it on November 3 DID participate, WERE dialoguing. Maybe so many things are not good, but

THAT. IS. GOOD.

Thanks!


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