Watching from Afar
The last 24 hours have been an interesting experience – watching results roll in from the American mid-term elections. I have no part in the circus – I live on the other side of the world – and should really be worrying about the ridiculous situation my own country finds itself in. And yet here I am, sitting high atop a fence, watching everything unfold, and wondering how the news is sinking in for so many that I know.
There are all sorts of incendiary remarks I could make about waiting for previous generations to die before real change might happen, or pointing fingers at poor education, or a handful of other things – but I keep quiet.
I keep quiet because although so many of us share a common language, we live in very different cultures, with different backgrounds, struggles, hopes, dreams, values, and ethics. We cannot hope to understand each other – hell, I struggle to understand the problems faced by people in my own country, let alone a distant country several times the size.
Maybe the big challenge for all of us going forwards will be to accept that we all share the same ball of mud. We're not going anywhere else any time soon either – so we should really learn to get a long a bit better. Sure, we might come from a different bit of the ball of mud, but we're all just people at the end of the day – mostly trying to do our best. Of course there are some arseholes – there are always arseholes – and we can try to humor them until they go away, because they will. Eventually.