Election Exhaustion Notes

What a day. Working at a voting center these past four days has been enlightening. The three main takeaways: anxiety runs rampant throughout the country, independent of political affiliation. Secondly, people seem to comprehend the vital importance of voting, and many deem it a civic duty. Finally, so many people, the overwhelming majority of people who voted or dropped off their vote-by-mail ballots at the voting center at which I worked, were incredibly gracious for our working the station. People care, people understand, people appreciate. The United States of America is a massive diverse country that is figuring itself out. We have much more growth and reflection to pursue. Regardless of the results this week, let’s focus on maintaining that understanding, that growth, and that reflection. 

United back of Mind

Do you know America, or do you just think you know? I asked myself this question today, as I considered how different life must be for someone living in Oregon, or Minnesota, or Arkansas, or Vermont or Georgia. I’ve been to 3 of those 5 states, but it’s been years and years, and visiting isn’t the same. We are a massive country with a diverse geographical landscape, distinct pockets of specific populations, and millions of people adopting different ways of life. There is no single one way to live—that’s what freedom is—and that’s what used to once unite us. Maybe we can go back to that, if we can more broadly consider how different one’s life experience might be somewhere else 1500 miles away. Let’s keep that in mind on Election Day Eve. We might disagree about the way to go about things, but we all want the same things. It will take resolve and grit, work and perseverance, but we can change this country, and we can change the world. 

Action Over Anxiety

Working at a voting station during this election has made it hard to not focus on politics. Many folks who have come in for early voting, either to drop off their absentee ballot or to vote in person, have been anxious. If you watch the news or consume it online, the anxiety makes sense—the sanctity of elections, the voting process itself, has been questioned and criticized for weeks. Perhaps it’s a signal to us to be more proactive in our citizenship, beyond the core civic duty of participating in elections. We determine the type of country we live in, by voting yes, but also by regularly communicating with our representatives, by communicating with our wallets, by consistently engaging in civil discourse, and by organizing in civil action when prudent. The power and extent of our democracy is determined by us, the people. Vote—it’s a great start—but continue to insist on citizenship governance all the other months of the year. Our thoughts, and our words, and our actions...they matter. 

A Different Halloween

It seems Halloween, like so many other things, is very different this year. I’m sure if you asked most people back in March or April they would have assumed we would be “back to normal” come Halloween. But as we itch to return to what we know, we must reflect on the state of our world when it was “normal.” We still had issues with our healthcare, our economic and political systems, with education. These big four were far from optimal. Do we simply want to return, or do we want to build something better? A lot of us are struggling mentally with our current covid reality. We are bored, restless, anxious. Maybe if we commit ourselves to working on improving the big four, our confidence and conscious will be uplifted. There is so much work to do. Are we willing to do it?

10 Political Things

I took political science 101 in my first semester of my freshman year of college, and I still remember the first day of class. After a lecture about the importance of politics, our professor gave us homework for the following session: make a list of 10 things that are affected by politics. Leaving it to the last minute, I found it kind of difficult to think of so many. I was impressed during the next lecture, as our professor randomly called on people to read 2-3 things on their list. They were all different. There wasn’t a single similar thing on anybody’s list. This cleverly reinforced our first lesson: politics affects everything. The cost of electricity in your home. Your NFL viewing experience. Where you live and how long it takes you to get to the grocery store. It literally affects every facet of our lives. This doesn’t mean we have to make it the center of our lives (as the media tries to do every 4 years in October), but that we can better understand its importance and how it affects our lives. Giving politics the proper amount of attention across our society is something we have yet to figure out. It’s time we take charge. 

Our Value of Life

I’ve blogged about this before, but I think it’s helpful to often ask ourselves about our purpose in life. We only have a limited amount of time alive. We have these big myelinated brains and we’re capable of great thought and great emotion, and maybe because of that it’s so easy to get lost in the shuffle of everything. To become consumed by the news and the election, to be too comfortable with the reality we’ve adapted to. Each person’s purpose is unique—it might not be her job, or family, or passion. But when we pose the question to ourselves often enough—what is my purpose in life—we can truly contribute value to the universe. 

Political Effort

Opinions disagree all the time. What about you!? I’ve asked myself that question  many times. Our responsibility doesn’t start or end with a date. It’s a continuous effort, that we need to maintain. Who said it was easy? 

Modern Life Restart

Time passes. We get older, we turn into our habits. The days can blend together. Such can be modern life. We enjoy lives of such incredible privilege that we become far removed from the Earth, from the feeing of being alive. How to combat this? Wander. Explore. Refrain from consumption. Our brains reset, and we return to the majesty that is the natural world in the present moment. 

Election Work

I read the 8 tips on Five Thirty Eight on how to stay sane over the next 8 days until the election. They were good tips, but I think the key is really just  to vote. I’ve made my decisions and submitted my ballot, and I received confirmation that it was received and will be counted. With only consuming the news on Monday’s and Friday’s, there’s now very little time for me to stress or absorb more information. I’ve done my civic duty; doing your part helps put you at ease. I’ve now done the work for the immediate future; the rest starts when the new officials are elected. We must hold our officials accountable and encourage new incentivizes within our political system so that it works for all of us, not just the elite. Voting is step one. The next fifty steps start in January.

Fine Line of Hope

Not that he first proposed the actual thought experiment, but Barack Obama had a great point when he declared, “If you had to choose one moment in history in which you could be born, and you didn’t know ahead of time who you were going to be–what nationality, what gender, what race, whether you’d be rich or poor, gay or straight, what faith you’d be born into–you wouldn’t choose 100 years ago. You wouldn’t choose the fifties, or the sixties, or the seventies. You’d choose right now.”

We certainly have our problems, and it will take a lot more than effort or humility to create the solutions, but the fact remains that’s a true statement. We live in a world more free, more fair, and more just, than any time before. Is it 100% free, fair, or just? No. Breonna Taylor. No, the Uyghurs in China. No, there are human rights violations around the world.

And yes, it’s incredibly easy for me to comment on all this as a straight white male American in California. But we’ve made progress, and I try to do my part in perpetuating the progress previous generations have made.

There is so much work to do. But there is also so much to be grateful for—can we thread the needle? Can we do both?

Voting is a Duty

Today I voted and submitted my ballot for the US general election. It was work, even with how much ballots and the voting process has been improved over the years. Deciding on local propositions can be tricky, and voting for people is precarious at best. But the point is not for it to be as easy as possible, even though we are well on our way there. The purpose is to enact your civic duty, your responsibility as a citizen of this country. Our political system, the economic marketplace, society... they are the result of what we choose. The real work begins once our elected officials take office, but voting is a fundamental duty of living in this country. What kind of country do we want to be? What type of community do we want to live in? Our voting and our voices determine the possibilities.  

One Year of Blogging

My whole issue is action. I think about things a lot, I read a lot of information, and I learn a lot of new things, which is all well and dandy, but I don’t do enough. I don’t take action and thus don’t see dividends on the change I want to see. 

That’s why I’m proud of blogging every day for one year. The anniversary is today, October 23rd. It was exactly a year ago, in Tanzania, that I realized, “I have no excuse for not blogging every single day. What is preventing me from publishing my writing each day? Nothing. Let’s go.” 

So I made a commitment to myself that I would submit my ideas, thoughts and feelings to the public every single day. It’s perhaps the biggest, most tangible, long-term promise to myself I’ve ever followed through on. 

The first 5 months of blogging were done while traveling the world, which made it much easier to think of interesting topics because I was experiencing so many cool things. And it was encouraging that I was able to blog anywhere in the world—Kenya, Cambodia, Laos… the world is becoming more connected, and basically everywhere has internet. In many ways that’s a great thing.

It got harder once I returned home and was confined to my home because of the pandemic. There were so many days, somany, that I didn’t feel like blogging. That I didn’t want to face the pressure of publishing my writing. I did it anyway. I took action. Sometimes it wasn’t very good; a lot of my posts, in my eyes, suck. But I did them, and it gave me practice; practice at pressure writing, at developing voice, at figuring out my topics.

So now the big question is, "What now? What's Year Two?" Well, it’s been long overdue that I build some better functionality and a more intuitive user interface into this site. That will be a short-term focus. But I think the elephant in my mind that’s been glaring at me for quite some time is audience. I vow in this second year to no longer be afraid of building my audience. I have to learn how to do it, and it will be challenging. But as I asked myself one year ago today, “So what? Why not? Do you really want this?” The answer is an emphatic yes. I look forward to delivering even more over the next year. Because I believe in the ideas I put forth. I believe we can build a better world together.

To those of you who have been reading this from the beginning, thank you. This has been a transformative journey for me, and I can’t wait to see where the next stage of metamorphosis takes me. In a very meaningful way, you have been along for the ride with me since day one, and I’m forever indebted to your belief and encouragement.

To one more year of producing content. To one more year of trying to raise global consciousness, unite humanity, and inspire change. We can change the world.

On the Shortness of Life

Life is short. That’s the saying. Make that extra effort for your loved ones. Reach for that dream job you really want. Explore new places and meet new people and learn new things. As you get older, you rapidly realize that an 85 year average isn’t that long. There’s a balance to being emphatically grateful for the time allowed to us, but also cultivating a sense of urgency around our deepest desires and passions. It can be hard to nurture such perspective every single day. But find a way. Your future-self, on your deathbed, will thank you for it.

From Focus, Experience

I often say “you are what you think about.” It’s not a new notion; it’s been expressed since Marcus Aurelius and probably beyond. Another way to consider this phenomeneon is to word it slightly differently: “you experience what you focus on.” This can inhibit gratitude for how wonderful our lives truly are. We aren’t subsisting on hunting and gathering anymore, so we complain about our jobs and the drudgery of modern life. We might not focus on the magical nature of reality in this crazy universe we are a part of, so our experience seems ordinary. Albert Einstein utilized a faux-dichotomy to combat stagnation and wallowing (either everything is a miracle or nothing is). It may seem backwards, but it is truly our focus that determines our level of experience. The choice is ours. 

Official Qualities

Do we want people with predisposed solutions running for office? What happens when they are elected and the other public servants disagree with them? There are certainly some levers of incentivization that need to be pulled within our political system. But we also need open individuals who are capable of communication, compromise, and diligence. Remember, voting is only the first step of citizenship and improving our country. The real work begins upon Inauguration Day, whether that’s for president or your local congressional representative. It is our responsibility as constituents to hold our representatives accountable, to ensure they understand what we want. Thus we need folks of reason in office. The burden, and the choice, is ours. 

Relationships, Impact and Time

Today would have been my grandfather’s 88th birthday. He was a good man, and I learned a lot from him. I was lucky to be old enough to really get to know him before he died, in 2008. We used to remain at the table after family dinners, talking about life, economics, politics, and history. He would allow me, even as a naive teenager, to voice my opinions regarding those things—but he would challenge me as well, forcing me to back up my assertions with evidence or logic. His perspective, being an old man, was often different than mine, and I think I first developed longer-term thinking through our chats. He’s been gone for a long time now, but our family still talks about him often. His memory and impact live on through us, as we pass it down to our children. At the end of the day, our time will end at some point. That can be scary to appreciate and consider. But it also makes those moments with loved ones that much more meaningful. We get to decide what to do with the time given to us. What will it be? Happy birthday Grandpa, I love you. 

Looking at Life

I tend to think about the deep stuff a lot, but I can’t help but feel the pandemic is forcing all of us to consider the totality of life’s experience. People have lost their lives to the coronavirus. Many others have had their livelihoods significantly altered or eliminated. There is still the lingering anxiety around civil unrest. Politics and the economy have crossed beyond sore subjects. We are being pressed with the grand scope of this adventure we call life. Turn off the news, put down the phone, and spend time with those who mean the most. 

It Takes Time

I was thinking about the delay of the onset of symptoms for Covid-19, how it can take 5 days or more to show symptoms of the virus and how it complicates our response to it. Our current understanding is it takes a certain viral load to become infected, to become contagious to others, and to develop symptoms—we’re still learning the exact timelines for each phenomenon and there is variance among different people as well as potential overlap between the different events. That’s what makes this virus so hard: there’s periods of time where everything seems fine, in which you don’t know you are sick and can spread the pathogen to others. But then I realized how everything takes time. We’ve grown soft in this luxurious technological world, where pages load incredibly fast on the internet and communication occurs instantly across great distances. In the real world, we have to wait. Things take time. If you want to lose weight, you don’t drop it after eating less for just one day. You don’t get in shape after one workout. Starting a company takes time. Learning a new skill takes innumerable repetition. We don’t really live in an instantaneous world. Perhaps if we taper our expectations, we won’t only deal with the coronavirus better; maybe we’ll come back to the present, maintain awareness, and live better lives. 

Children Investments

It was so nice playing with my niece tonight. Children are the future, and it’s a constant, never-ending investment. It’s also a continual joy, and an incredible blessing. It takes 20 years to see the return on our investment in child rearing and education. But it’s also the most important one we can make. The sooner we see that, the faster our world will get better. 

Keeping it Simple

The KISS principle (“keep it stupid simple”) not only applies to design, but to our collective perspectives and experiences. Simple retains truth over the long term, and we can always come back to the simple things. In plain terms, all humans want the same things: health, wealth, and happiness. One can lead a good life by cultivating the fundamental qualities of gratitude, earnest, and consideration. Americans can unite around the common ideals of the nation: freedom, justice, and equality. We may disagree politically, or live our lives differently, or want separate things when breaking it down further, but on a meaningful level, on a simple level, we are all the same. Going back to the core concepts, returning to the basic principles, and rediscovering the simple truths will enable us to grow and prosper. Embracing ‘simple' makes harmony and synergy possible. Change may be the only thing in life that’s constant, but returning to simplicity can change the world.