Politics can’t shake me

I can feel the static in the air around this whole election but somehow I feel far away from it all.

Of course I am physically far away from it all, living as far as I possibly can from my home country, but it’s not as if the fever hasn’t hit these shores.

Japan is watching the election almost as closely as Europe or South America is.

Elections always remind me that I am a minority no matter where I go. I do not want to have a conversation without any nuance. I am not looking to tell anyone they are wrong. I do not believe in this whole debate. The left side and the right side don’t represent me and the center is all bought out by corporate interests and lobbyists as well so I am completely outside.

I never wanted to be a moderate but in a world where the two sides are more interested in hyper focusing on the very worst actors from the opposite side, what else can I be?

I know that neither side is (in general) as bad as the other side says, and that both allow some pretty awful things slide in order to support their narrative. But I’m willing to shut my mouth and go without calling anyone out if it means helping to forge some conversation.

So much of this is just misunderstanding. That’s not to say there isn’t a boatload of corruption and sinister intentions, but I’m not talking about the people at the top, none of which are innocent. I’m talking about regular people.

The country and the city are different worlds. The life of the rich and poor are so vastly different. Every single demographic is ful of so many different personality and unique sub groups and people are so quick to stereotype the entire group based on the worst or best of what they find.

Stereotypes are useful when we don’t cling to them when we allow them to be proven wrong, when we refuse to use them to judge individuals. They’re more like hypotheses than facts.

But we shouldn’t be stereotyping half a country. I can list 10 different factions on each side of this battle, and half of them are more worried about the other side than they are actually in support of their own side. Some of it is misguided and some of it is not.

The point is that none of these narratives are complete. All of them have biases. There is no objective truth to be found, because an objective truth is far bigger and more complex than any of us can comprehend.

I wish more of us could approach these things with humility and a desire to be the adult in the room when everyone else is acting like children, not fighting and name calling but trying to create some kind of rapport in order to heal the division that has clearly been seeded, used as a way to control and manipulate us, by various factions that carry various ideologies.

Mostly I feel strongly that we can only create a lasting and meaningful change from the bottom up, by changing how we interact, how we connect, what we expect of ourselves.

If you want to fix things, don’t throw your support at a lesser evil, be a better person. Treat yourself better. Treat others better. Heal. Help others heal. Learn to listen. Listen first and then speak, in a way that is not looking to beat the other person but just with the goal of understanding each other if possible. And if it’s not possible, let it go. Not every person you meet is meant to understand you.

Just build the bridges you can, don’t be swayed by the noise and keep your path, regardless of what kind of crazy things happen in the political sphere. Our level of consciousness dictates our behavior and therefore it can shape the world.

What are you making out of it?

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