Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Post-election questions

Whew! We got through election day somehow. It seemed a particularly nasty primary earlier in the year and a particularly divisive campaign season. Yet over the weekend I heard historians discuss how alive and well incivility was when our Founding Fathers laid out plans for our country, too. So perhaps there's really nothing new under the sun after all. Angry, negative rhetoric and incivility have been around forever.

All of this leads me to ask myself: What am I doing to bring more light and goodness into the world? Am I taking more light out of the world than I'm bringing to it on any given day? In other words, am I being negative, angry or resentful—and spreading that to those around me? Or am I doing my part to stay positive and loving even when the world around me is filled with loud and angry (campaign) voices? What vibes am I sending out?

I don't tend to be a Pollyanna, and I typically am not a process-skipper (jumping right over the hard work when problems land on my plate and moving right to the live-happily-ever-after stage). However, I also have spent too many hours in my past complaining, acting like a victim, resenting the way things are, and not engaging in "radical acceptance" (see my November 1 blog)—not realizing that I do have a choice about how I respond to things in my life. I want to use the personal power I do have, and I want to make choices that are positive for me as well as for those around me. I want to tell "river stories" and not "rut stories" (see my February 10 blog) from now on.

What are your post-election questions of yourself? What will you do to make yourself and your world a better place?

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