An Election Story: What I Learned

This is not really a story about the election (or education) exactly, but about distraction, and about what I learned this time.

I didn't know that Rick and Fred had gone to Florida until they were on their way back. Let me tell you the story that leads up to that discovery, and what it reminded me of.

I've known Rick and his two brothers since we were all kids, mostly because our parents were friends. Rod was the youngest; in the tradition of youngest siblings everywhere, the most laid-back and fun of the lot. He was enough younger that he was still a student in high school when I returned as a teacher. 

In high school he dated Chris, a year behind him in school. I knew her because she played trombone in the marching band (I was assistant director) and in the town band section with me. A few years later, they got married, moved to Florida, built their dream house. Then a heart defect triggered a heart attack that took Rod's life. He was 26. 

Chris stayed in that house. Years later, she remarried. I don't know him, but Chris has a heart of gold, and if she felt Mike was worth marrying, that's all I need to know about him. 

I've known Fred almost as long. We've played traditional jazz together for decades; for many years his brother (who had played in band with Chris, too) was our drummer, and was also taken by disease way too young.

So after weathering many hurricanes successfully, Chris and Mike got hammered by Ian. Rick and Fred (both retired these days) loaded up and headed down. They drive to Florida, helped Chris and Mike and some other folks in that community rebuild and clean up, and headed back north just ahead of the next hurricane. (And there's a Go Fund Me)

I missed all of this until the tail end; my social media and much of my own attention was focused on the mid term elections and the worry what the outcomes could mean for various policies that I care about. My attention was so focused on the politics and policy that I missed some basic human stuff.

It's not that elections and politics and policy don't matter--they do. But it's a mistake to get so focused on them that we forget to note the basic stuff of life. Taking care of each other. Helping folks deal with the inevitable struggles that are part of life.

Ironically, Pennsylvania's campaign contained its own corrective. Fetterman, already a Regular Human type candidate, had his stroke, and struggled through recovery in a way that many pundits identified as a political liability, but which many regular human beings identified as the kind of struggle and striving that regular human beings go through. 

Politics matter, but they aren't life. They can make life easier or harder, but life itself is still about human striving and growing and building and working through whatever circumstances have thrown in our path, and helping those we are connected to, helping them do the same. 

This, perhaps, is why so much of politics has become screaming, a constant giga-decibel attempt to convince us that nothing could possibly be more important than Candidate X and Policy Y, because political operatives have learned that it takes a high level of screaming and fear and disaster-style rhetoric to draw our attention away from living our lives as human beings in the world.

Politics matter. One of the ways we watch out for our fellow humans is by working against policies that hurt them. But politics aren't everything, and human beings that we disagree with are still human beings. 

So what did I learn? I learned that I need to resist being distracted from life on the human scale just because the arena has become really loud and shiny. I'm reminded that my own definition--helping students become and discover their best selves, learning to be fully human in the world--is about human scale, and that's the scale I don't ever want to lose sight of. The central issue is always that people are trying to make their way through the world, and when we have the power to make their journey easier or harder, it is right to make it easier. Sometimes that involves politics and elections, but mostly it just involves paying attention and being human.