“Home is where your heart is content, your angst is quiet, and you can, maybe, see yourself letting go of fears.” —fiber artist Eleanor Shadow
By this definition, America hasn’t been home for any of us in 2020. Coronavirus, corrupt leadership, unemployment and evictions, starving families, immigrant children put in cages, Black men and women dying at the hands of police, jerks refusing to wear masks or social distance then passing illness and death on to their friends and family, frustrated parents and children caught up in distance learning mazes, people questioning climate change as the world burns around them.
Aren’t you yearning for home? I am. I am tired of this divided America. It is loud and ugly. It is unnerving and dangerous. We all believe we are right. We all believe we are the good guys. When in reality, we are neither good nor evil—just human.
Yeah, humans run full speed on emotions. We get an idea stuck in our craw and refuse to budge because now by identifying with it, we can’t back down.
But what if we did back down, come full stop, hit reset?
Maybe this election we would not vote for Candidate A because he’s against abortion or Candidate B because she’s an environmentalist. Maybe we would look deeper—past the slick fear-mongering ads, the mountains of lies, and the misinformation on Facebook and Twitter produced by teen troll farms and Russian bots—and ask ourselves:
Will my vote make the world better for everyone?
Will this decision, this important moment in my life, help to build home?
That makes the choice much easier—voting for contentment, peace, and security.
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For a look at what happens when people believe they are the good guys and only their perspective is the right one, check out my novel Book of Mercy.
