First I Wasn’t, Then I Was for a While, Then I Wasn’t Again, and Now I Am
I didn’t grow up w/ any political knowledge… I grew up w/ what I like to call “default conservatism” - which basically means I didn’t know any better about most things because no one taught me about stuff that mattered to other people outside of my immediate surroundings… and especially if those people were not like me, you know, like if they were another color, or richer or poorer than me, or if they liked people of the same sex… etcetera, etcetera…
… this was my existence for the first two and a half decades or so of my life… I was just “normal”, of course not really knowing or caring that “normal” was all relative, and that everybody was just “normal” if you really thought about it… which I didn’t…
… until I did, and then I began to think about it more… and I thought about things, and I learned about things, and I saw things from different perspectives, and I started to understand why politics mattered, and why what other people were experiencing mattered, and why it especially mattered because it wasn’t what I was experiencing, and I got really into politics, and I read a lot, and I discussed a lot, and I yelled a lot, and I argued a lot, and I yelled some more, and I argued some more, and I yelled some more, and etcetera, etcetera, etcetera…
… until I decided that I didn’t want to be that guy anymore, I didn’t want to care about everything, and know about everything that was going on in the world, and I didn’t want to have to agree w/ people, or disagree w/ people, I didn’t want to talk about stuff that didn’t concern me and my immediate surroundings, I just wanted to mellow out and hang w/ my kids, and read novels, and write humorous stories, and watch Jeopardy, and have nothing to do w/ politics…
… until recently when I wanted that stuff again… and I started to read again, and I started to get more involved, and I started to care again, and I started to relate to other people’s situations again, and I started to think that it was important to be involved and to care and to relate… I wanted to be human again, and make a difference in the world…
… so I guess I’m doing that now… a little bit…in directionless, random ways… for the time being, I like it… but we’ll see how long that lasts… for my personal history has proven that everything goes in cycles…
