I've bit my tongue and tried to keep from saying what it is that is on my mind. I know that political and moral rantings and raving is not necessarily what I use this blog for and though I realize that I should find a new space to post this, but for now this is what I will work with.

I've spent almost a year now pushing and pulling myself into so many directions I should be completely morphed as a body. From here to there to anywhere in between. What I thought I wanted 6 months ago is nothing I could dream of wanting now. The political atmosphere in this country is electric. Everyone has an opinion about how and what should be happening. We claim we want change and though I have no doubt that the majority of people do, it's one thing to want and it's completely separate to go after it. It's very distinctive those who are willing to sacrifice themselves for the change they seek and I believe that we as a country and as a people haven't seen enough suffering to really believe what true change looks like. We didn't grow up during the Great Depression, we didn't live through a World War. This war we're fighting now, is a television war, a war we're so distanced and far away from we barely can acknowledge it until something awful happens because of it. We've settled on high gas prices, we've settled on the economic recession, we've even settled as to what our so-called "President" and his cabinet have done for the last 8 years. We cry change but I don't know who is willing to sacrifice themselves for it.

I thought I was. I left college with all of the hopes and ideals that someone graduating from a Liberal Arts College should. I walked into the world thinking this is my chance to stamp it with the change I want to see. This is my opportunity to do something my parents were too scared to do. So I left. I packed up and I moved out West. Took a job for a company claiming to be a Grassroots Movement and it was working for them that I realized that those that claim to be the change we want to see, our just shells of a good idea gone terribly bad. It's these anarchists movements, these grassroots campaigns, claiming change for the better of the people that are exactly what change shouldn't be. It shouldn't be a false claim providing a faulty product. It should be something of passion and of virtue. Something deep from within, not something that sounds good but will never work.

I've seen the devastation that can happen in moments of government lapse. I was in New Orleans post-Katrina just months after families were allowed back to see their broken homes and non-existent neighborhoods. It changes you. Meeting those people and seeing first-hand the destruction and horrible devastation that occurs after these tragedies. And yes, they are tragedies. Watching a family be torn apart, ripped away from their homes and their families and completely unsure of ever returning, it's a tragedy and seeing it, it changes you. Walking around a section of earth, all buildings torn and crumbled, buildings that weren't in this condition more than 7 months prior. You see bikes in trees, cars flipped over, "possible dead-body" scrolled in spray paint on the side of a house that's been ripped from it's foundation. You meet the families of these homes and find that they're living spread out across the country with other family members, or in shelters for those displaced by the storm. They wear a heavy sadness that can really only be found in those that have known loss and pain to the extent that they do. This changes you. It changed me. And I'm not trying to sit here and paint myself the martyr of human-suffering. Nothing of the sort.

What I'm trying to get at is this: if we want to see change happen we have to be willing to work together to create it. The radicals and the passively political need to combine to create the change we want to see. Change is not something that happens over night. It's not something that we'll see in our lifetime most likely. It is a gradual process of push and pull, of give and take and you have to be willing to understand that. You have to be open to the idea that everything you think is right might not be and you have to be willing to change accordingly. It's not black and white, it's a series of grays that are constantly fluctuating.

It's best to make your own decisions and not be led down a path of self-discovery by someone else. There are choices we're forced to make the older we get and the choice of following another into self-understanding or taking the time and courage to understand it ourselves is the biggest. Perhaps it's just my bias, but it seems that most great ideas come from the time we've spent alone with ourselves. Martin Luther came up with the 95 Theses for Lutheranism on the toilet. As funny as it is, it is these moments alone that we're able to find the most clarity if we're willing to take the time to step back and notice it. The choices we make in life, for better or worse, define us as people. We're a constantly changing species and I have no doubt that this upcoming election will bring a much needed and much necessary change for this country but at the same time, we have to be open to the idea that there will be things that happen that won't be what we wanted but it's that give and take that's needed to constantly keep striving for our ultimate goals.

Don't let other define who you are and what you believe, by doing so you're closing yourself to change and though almost always terrifying, change is needed for growth. If we as a species never questioned what we were told to believe in, we would have never evolved into the species we are now. Humanity is only a danger to itself. Between passivity toward change and aggressive radicalism toward a specific change that's not necessarily for the best, it's a danger. It's a constant fight against ignorance and intolerance, and even those on the liberal side can be just as ignorant as those on the conservative. I've played witness to ignorance on both sides and find it sad that so many people can cut themselves off to change because of one particular idea that they so zealously need to chase after.

If there is anything I've learned is that choices should be made according to yourself, not someone else. It's too easy to follow what others are saying, it's much harder to question it and discover what it is you believe in. Take the time. Change doesn't come quick or easy, but it's still a possibility if we leave ourselves open. So question everything I've just written and make the decision for yourself whether to move forward from it or pass it off as just another "chant for change" we've become so accustomed to hearing through these past several months of political ferocity in this country.