It
is time to vote. The most important presidential election,
perhaps in American history, is approaching. Voting
is your only way to determine what you want, what
you stand for, what your life is about. When you "throw
away" your opportunity to vote, you vote anyway. You
vote for apathy, indifference, powerlessness. The
first time I visited Eastern Europe, experienced the
Iron Curtain, and my fear when crossing back into
Berlin of the young boys in uniform at the checkpoint
with their automatic weapons, the barbed wire, and
concrete barriers I realized what the right to vote
means, and what it means to be able to travel where
I please, say what I feel, and do what I need to do.
None of those freedoms existed in East Germany. Even
if we foolishly vote them away in the next election
- if we vote for fear, superiority, exclusiveness,
powerlessness - we cannot throw away the necessity
of voting continually throughout every day, and every
hour.
When
you are impatient, will you vote for patience or the
impatience that you are feeling? Acting on the impatience
is a vote for it. Challenging it (not acting on it)
is a vote for patience. When you are angry will you
vote again for anger (act on it), or will you vote
for understanding and care (not act on it). What you
vote for gets elected. You are the only one voting
in the election. The candidates are always love and
fear. Love runs on the harmony, cooperation, sharing,
and reverence for Life ticket. It presents itself
as gratitude, caring, patience, contentment, appreciation,
and more. Fear runs on the discord, competition, hoarding,
and exploitation ticket. It presents itself as anger,
jealousy, resentment, superiority, inferiority, need
to dominate, need to please, and every obsessive thought
that you think (such as, He is so stupid; I am so
stupid), every compulsive activity you engage (such
as workaholism, perfectionism, savior searching),
and your every addictive behavior (such over-eating,
smoking, gambling, watching pornography, shopping,
alcohol, drugs).
Listen
carefully to the candidates that are running for election.
Get to know them. Let yourself imagine what it would
be like to live in the world they want to create.
Do you want to live that world? Each time you vote,
the candidate you choose wins. You act on your anger
or not, challenge your jealousy or not, indulge the
need to please or not. You can loose the ability to
vote in a democratic election. It is not guaranteed
and it would not exist without the courage and blood
that were required to create and maintain it. Don't
throw that courage and sacrifice away. Love your neighbors
enough, including those who have come before you,
to honor their gifts. People like you have died so
that you can vote. Voting in a democratic election
is that precious.
You
will never loose your ability to vote for love or
fear. It cannot be taken from you and you have no
option but to use it. Each moment that you are angry
you must challenge your anger or act on it, challenge
your impatience or act on it, challenge your sense
of hopelessness or let it control you. Each moment
you vote for the world that you want to live in by
choosing a loving part of your personality or a frightened
part. No one counts your vote. Each vote creates consequences
that you encounter in the intimacy of your own experience.
Only your vote stands between you and the life that
you want to live, between joy and pain, between meaning
and emptiness.
It
is time to vote.
Love,
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