• by Kaila Colbin , Featured Contributor, November 1, 2024

I cannot stop thinking about the election, and I don’t even live in the States. I imagine, if I were still there, it would be all-consuming: a relentless onslaught of urgency and hyperbole and just-$3-to-get-us-across-the-line.

So with just a few days to go, I wanted to issue you an invitation.

Vote, yes. I am a big fan of voting. Vote your conscience. Make the best decision you can with the information you have.

And then trust that everyone is making the best decision they can with the information they have.

I know it can be hard to believe. It’s so obvious that the other candidate is the absolute worst. How can those people not see it? They must be either ignorant or evil.

When you are surrounded by the information you have, it takes a huge leap to imagine what it’s like to not be surrounded by that information. It’s virtually impossible to forget what we already know, to know how we would feel if we had consumed a completely different set of perspectives.

During the 2016 election, the Wall Street Journal ran an eye-opening experiment called Red Feed, Blue Feed. It showed, side by side, what it would look like to get a steady diet of information from liberal-aligned sources vs conservative-aligned ones.

The experiment is, unfortunately, no longer maintained, but I still remember looking at it: the sucker-punch, sickening realization that of course I would hold different beliefs if I had different information.

So here is the invitation.

It’s an invitation to remember that the president doesn’t determine what kind of relationship you have with your kids, your friends or your neighbors.

It’s an invitation to recognize that you vote for president once every four years but you vote for the kind of person you want to be every single day.

It’s an invitation to remember my favorite definition of human: that we are all just imperfect meat sacks stumbling through life.

Back in 2003, in the early stages of the Iraq War, my friend Zsolt wrote this:

“All around you, in your own neighborhood, are people who need your energy, your time, your love -- an elderly invalid, a young boy who is struggling to learn his multiplication tables, workers who have lost their jobs, families living in poverty…

“The war will go how the war will go, and certainly we must be mindful of our leaders’ assumptions that we are stupid enough to forego our deepest beliefs in freedom in order for them to climb to ever higher power and glory. Yet we are no better than they if we remain unwilling to reach out to those in our midst, both neighbors and strangers, in order to make our communities -- especially those that have been abandoned by the same government intent on saving communities elsewhere around the world -- better places to live, so that when the war does end, in a week or a decade, our own neighborhoods will be safer, cleaner, and friendlier, less burdened by oppression…

“Personally I am not very good at theories, schemata and systems, and thus am a dubious and insubstantial commentator on current events. But I do know that putting your arms around someone in need and holding them close against your own beating, uncertain heart, does make the world a safer, calmer place for all of us, does create peace in our souls. I urge you, for every angry, snide, confused or prejudiced comment you spout, please turn to someone you despise and put your arms around him, hold him close, to feel his beating, uncertain heart next to yours. This, my friend, will do more to bring peace than all the demonstrating, the placards, the rhetorical propaganda, the bombs and policy making you could ever imagine.

“If you and I are incapable of embracing those whom we loathe or with whom we disagree, how can we seriously expect our political and religious leaders to do so, and in doing so take the necessary steps toward civility and tolerance, toward peace?”

The election will go how the election will go, and certainly we must be mindful that the democratic experiment relies on our informed participation. But I invite you, in its aftermath, to set it aside. To reach out to those around you. To remember that, no matter whose name was on our ballots, we are all just imperfect meat sacks with beating, uncertain hearts, longing to be embraced.

Go well next week. See you on the other side.

With love,

Kaila Colbin