377 days - Blog #100 solutions
I can’t help it. I’m
sad today. I guess disappointed is the
better word.
I am, however, fatigued by politics. It is a lot of talking. A lot of talking in escalated pitch and
volume. Not a lot of listening. Definitely very little understanding. Or any effort, really, to understand. And yes, I fail to understand why so many
amongst whom I live and love are so red.
And, no, I don’t really try.
I am comfortable in my beliefs. I realize that a good deal more as I’ve
settled back into Central Massachusetts and no longer live in the friendly
liberal city of Newton or work in the very easy going, diverse neighborhood of
Jamaica Plain. I’ve encountered a lot
more red in the last year. Those
encounters force me to contemplate why I think what I do and about when to show
my blue. Because I like my political
adversaries. I like them because I see
their humanity and a lot of our commonality that can’t be defined in the voting
booth.
I am still tired.
I am tired of speaking to the choir and having everything
else fall on deaf ears. Besides, it is
one thing to talk about politics. Or
change. Or solving problems. It is another thing entirely to do something
about it.
I like to think I’ve been better about seeking solutions
than merely pointing them out with a well versed rant. I like to think that… but I know I still succumb
to those Facebook status impulses. I
will still get swept up in a conversation with my more bohemian socialist
thinking comrades (because, yes we are both socialist and communist.) But I do get tired of seeing the world as a
hopeless sea of the insolvable.
A few days ago I was in a meeting where someone called me
optimistic. I guess that’s not a bad
word, but I often find that it is a thinly veiled jab also meant as naïve. It was an answer to the fact I was weary of
hearing a long list of problems and how everything seemed to happen passively. So
I offered up the idea of solutions. I
get that other perspective. I live there
in quite a few parts of my life. But
playing that skipping record only succeeds in hurting one’s ears and, as my
father would often warn me, it ruins the needle by which one can play another piece
of music.
I confess I was a little put off by that word optimism. I don’t think of my view as rosy colored by
any extreme. I think it is a case that I
see the problems and choose to figure out their solutions, as messy or unpleasant
or tedious as they may be. I would
rather approach something and say it has an answer than continue to throw my
arms in the air and complain about it.
But even there, in that contemplation, isn’t there a
lesson? That two people with good intentions
see things completely differently. Based
on frustrations and separate life experiences.
That said, I’m still not optimistic. I am determined.
I told myself as I went to sleep last night … I decided to
go to sleep before the election results were official, but had a sense they
were heading to the disappointed end of the spectrum… that easy though it will
be to live in that glum reality of complaining, it doesn’t do any good. For anyone.
Democrat or Republican. Town or
state or country. And yet… good can
still be done. It can always be
done. Every day. In a little way. I can keep going to those finance committee
meetings. I can keep working at building
a community in my little town’s theater.
I can build a community of writers.
I can think again about that graduate degree in urban/rural development
and contemplate a thesis on creative economy.
I can do these things instead of complaining. I could fail.
I could be disappointed in them just as much as I am by today’s
headlines. I could make a difference in
one person’s life. Or several. I can try.
And if that is naïve optimism, I’ll take it. It’s a helluva lot better than just seeing
red.
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