The political season gets Bernie and I talking. Years ago we would have been on the opposite side of issues but things have changed. It isn’t so much that one of us has brainwashed the other, it is more that both of us are getting old. Old isn’t about getting rusty in the brain. Old is about living more of life and gaining a different perspective by the shear broadening of one’s base of experience.
We read together each morning one of those little reflections-for-the-day books. This morning the reflection was about the inner voice we each have that is sometimes hard to hear but is more true than the many voices that bombard us each day. In an election year voices “out there” get louder, more self-righteous, and angrier. During the last election I was pretty taken in by such voices. It wasn’t a good feeling at all. I lost my center and couldn’t hear my inner voice.
This year I am trying to listen to what the inner voice is trying to tell me. I think it is telling me that the problems of our country are just different colors or magnitudes of the same human problems that plague each of us. It tells me that if we want to change the world we first have to change ourselves.
I am not sure that I can take my train of thought much further than that. I guess I am still sitting in the station stoking up my engine.