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.