Two November Days 11/1/2020

By: Jennifer Richardson Holt

This could turn out to be a shorter post than normal (emphasis on COULD). This won’t exactly be my typical subject matter hence I make such a statement. Then again if you read this regularly you know me and know I am capable of excessive rambling given the chance so, I suppose we shall see.

This post publishes on the first day of November.  Here in this country, and this year particularly, that means two things.  It is the beginning of the Thanksgiving season and we are about to have an Election. I was thinking about those two events.  They seem, on the surface to be two incomparable affairs.  Put them side by side, especially now, and they do seem to be two very dissonant notes.  Looking at them casually it seems that perhaps side by side we are comparing warm pies, one made by a loving grandmother, the other by the intestinal processes of a farm animal.  That sounds overly dramatic but if you live in America and can see any and every discussion of our election this year then, no, no it really isn’t. (I’m looking at you media.) I want to propose though, that if we (and by we I mean any person in America at this present time OR anyone that can find some feasible life application in this so, everyone) take the time to really look and contemplate the two, that maybe, just maybe they don’t have to be so diametrically opposed.

Now, fear not. I have neither the intention nor desire to tell you for whom you should or should not vote. I like to think that people, or hopefully at least a majority of the country, will give the decision its due contemplation.  I can encourage you to NOT, and I cannot stress this enough, believe what you are TOLD to believe.  Do your own research.  If you were buying a car, or choosing a job or, to really simplify the matter, deciding what to have for dinner you would do your own research.  Surely the leadership of your country is owed at least that much.  Really have a good internal dialogue with yourself. What is important to me?  How do I want the affairs of my home to be conducted?  Mull that over. And I mean really mull.  I mean make like a lovely autumn cider and really, truly stew and let all the elements blend and become one well steeped ideology. Then, once you have done so, research your options and make your decisions based on your conclusions and values. That is all the wisdom (and yes I know it’s unrequested, but at least it’s brief) I offer to you about this election. Think, study, by all means pray, and when you vote, mull well and remember cider. It is fall…should be pretty easy to keep in mind.

But how does choosing government officials relate to a glorious American holiday where we list all our blessings and, quite frankly, run out of special day before we exhaust the list? They do seem rather different don’t they?  Well, maybe not.  Both apply to an entire country. Ok Jennifer, that’s an underwhelming commonality you may say. Hear me out. What if, and I grasp the gravity of this if, this is a galaxy sized if, we looked at any happening that effected our nation as we look at say…Thanksgiving? The majority of us celebrate it in one way or another.  Each celebration looks different. Heaven knows this year the different looks may be off the charts from the average year.  If things stay true to form we could all discover turkey is actually poison and the new main dish of the day has to be skunk or porcupine or something. I mean come on, this year, I am not ruling anything out.  But really, think about it if we all broached the issues of the event that happens on the first Tuesday of this month in the same way we approach the last Thursday…imagine the possibilities.

Would it look the same for everyone? Certainly not! Will we all agree on the best way to run a country? My stars and garter belts no!  But can we all agree that we want our children and their children to grow up in a land that reads like all the heartening adjectives in our constitution? I think we can. I think we can all agree we want for our families and friends the best that this place has to offer. I mean on Thanksgiving some people do stuffing (I see you my dear non-southern folk) and others do dressing. They are very much not the same. I mean you have some daring people who throw oysters in their dressing! That is a bold and different move to say the least!  But, do you know what? As long as it’s done with love (and not served to anyone with a shellfish allergy which I make the hopefully safe assumption that nobody uses a food-centered holiday for nefarious purposes) it still serves well to fill out a table that represents gratefulness.  Will everyone have a helping? Nope. Does that mean everyone can’t enjoy themselves? Nope, again.

We don’t have a perfect, or within the same hemisphere as perfect, candidate on our ballot and never will.  Similarly, there are going to be those holiday family dinners where the kids get in a fight, someone accidentally puts salt instead of sugar in the red velvet cake or the dog tests the turkey before the family gets a chance.  Such is life in an imperfect world.  Do any of these things negate the value that should be placed on how amazing of a country we have where, even in difficulty, we are still immensely blessed?

This whole blog may very well be a case of unreasonably wishful thinking. I can’t help it though. Politics of late have turned us as a people into a society obsessed with us versus them.  We all have our opinions and values and we have allowed ourselves to be convinced that those who do not agree with us are our irreconcilable enemy.  I am just thinking though, every person’s Thanksgiving celebration is different.  Some are so different from our own that it’s almost foreign but, we don’t look at all those different meals and gatherings as inherently wrong, they’re just different and each has its own value.  Maybe on our first Tuesday in November we can all decide we love our country and want what’s best for it. Maybe we can agree that it won’t look exactly the same to everyone but that is the joy of the freedoms we have here, that we can disagree.  But maybe this year, let’s take our Tuesday mind and put it in a Thursday frame of reference.  Maybe we can look at it as a lot of different takes on one concept, no longer one side versus the other but just Americans being American in as many ways as there are Americans. Not us and them but only us. Us.  As it happens, those two letters are the initials of a great country I know.