Conscience

I believe in handshakes. There is something special about being able to look a person in the eye and know that you don’t have anything to hide. It is perhaps the most empowering feeling in the world. It doesn’t matter how well the person knows you, or how well you know them, because you know that you stand with a clear conscience. When two people can walk away with that same feeling, things just happen. Trust, cooperation, and understanding can develop in remarkable and unforeseen ways. When you can lay all your cards on the table and put your name on the line, people can tell. There is a marvelous, ingenious component within every human heart that has the potential to recognize anything and everything good. When you are who you say you are that little spark of light lets someone know in their deepest self that they can trust you.
The opposite is also true. When there is no truth, there is no light. Liars usually have to do a lot of talking. They try to make up for and drown out the objections of that ember of truth inside of us all. They have to think about every word, every gesture, the tone of their voice, and the clothes they wear. The good thing about being forthright is that all you have to worry about is telling the truth.
Shakespeare once wrote:
What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted!
Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just,
And he but naked, though locked up in steel,
Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.
Authors such as Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott refer to the medieval practice of settling a criminal accusation through an armed combat. According to the laws of chivalry, if there was no evidence in a case and it came down to the word of one man against another the most honorable way to settle the affair was to allow the accuser and the accused to fight until one either admitted his fault or was slain. They usually tilted lances against one another, and if both survived the encounter they would then fight hand to hand. Before the contest began both were made to stand before the people and swear by all that was holy to them that their cause was true, both blessing and cursing themselves. Asking that if they were in the right that they might be given the strength to win, and that if they had lied that they might fall before their foe.
That is the power of conscience. It is what makes you smile when you say, “I hope you have a good day” and really mean it. Deep down we are all a handshake people. We all want to be able to trust the person standing beside us even if we do not know them. I am convinced that one of the best ways for us to achieve that lofty goal is to make sure that everyone standing beside us can trust us. Even if they do not know who we are, we do.

Politics

I recently had the opportunity to think about what I think about. I sometimes wonder what makes things important to me. Some are expected and explainable: school, family, work, dating, and so forth. Other things are not so easy to put into the boxes. Today I want to talk about one of them: politics.
There is a lot of merit in the old saying, "If you want to start an argument just talk about religion or politics." I find it interesting that in our society a person's perspective on government is just as defining as their perception of God. We tend to use cheap labels that herd people into systems of belief that belittle their experiences. Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Conservative, Green, Liberal, even Independent: the moment you choose your label you choose how the world will categorize you. In society's defense we need those labels. Think about it for a minute, I mean with the millions of people in America how else would we ever be able to get anything done! If each person's unique perspective was considered individually we would be entirely unable to communicate, much less agree, on issues that dramatically influence our modern world.
So we think about it, we worry about it, even though there is not all that much that we can do about IT. Whatever IT happens to be at the moment. Health care, Terrorism, Immigration, Civil Rights, the Economy, you name it. If there were easy answers then they would have been figured out a long time ago. There are hundreds of millions of people in this country. Each with a different story, each with unique problems, and each with a different perspective, be it political or otherwise. So often it seems that if only everyone else would just understand, this would all be so much easier. Or perhaps it would be easier to just not worry about it. In the end I think that is what most of us try to do. Mentally we sweep these issues under the rug, and hope that somehow they will just take care of themselves. I am just as guilty as anyone else. I rationalize, "It doesn't effect me, why should I worry" or "There is nothing that I can do, so I shouldn't have to care." WRONG. It may well be true that there is nothing I can do, or that these things don't effect me, but I am only running from myself, and that is something that does matter. That does effect me, and there is something that I can do about it. I run away from sitting down with myself to think about what I feel. What is right, what is wrong, what should I stand for? These are the questions that are behind every argument. If ever we are to make of this world what we all want it to be deep down, it will be because we stop running from ourselves. In fact I think that when we stop running from ourselves we start to find everyone else too.