Yesterday, election day, I rode the downtown three train from 96th street to times square, heading towards eighth street and my weekly writing workshop. I’d cast my ballot hours earlier, but the experience of doing so is with me still. It sounds corny, but I wanted so deeply the outcome that, ultimately, came to pass, that I think I filled a little bit of my soul into the empty circle beside the name Barack Obama. Anyways, the importance of the election was on my mind as I stepped onto the three train and plopped down on the slippery blue bench. The car was crowded, peppered with difference – the woman in tweed pants and sneakers, the heels of her work shoes poking out from her handbag; the man in his carharts coming from one of the many construction jobs clogging up the UWS; and a kid in a football uniform, shoulder pads and all, smelling of sweat and looking nervously at the subway map posted across the aisle from him. I glanced at each of them, careful not to let my eyes rest too long on any one thing, but the woman looked up from her blackberry and caught my eye, forcing it upwards. There I saw it, posted in between the ads for 1 800 DIVORCE and Dr. Maury’s laser skin correction:
"The only freedom deserving the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental and spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest."
I’ve read this before – Freshman philosophy I believe, but never felt it so pertinent to my life as I do now. Here it is, republican and democratic ideals fused into one graceful form. And isn’t that what we are striving for? A balance of self care and respect for others, the kind which inherently affects a coming together of different political parties, different races, different places, and different ways of seeing, not with the aim of conversion or blame, but of common resolve to live peacefully and to strive for a greater understanding.
Yes, I thought as the doors dinged shut at 72nd street and the train moved on, moved forward through the darkness as will we all, with Obama standing beside us at our collective helm. Yes we can.
