I’m struggling with this election. Should I vote just because it’s my civic duty? Vote Green? Or sit this one out? – Anonymous
There’s a certain revulsion that builds up in the back of one’s throat when skimming headlines of this current U.S. election. Your mouth starts to salivate the way it does before lurching up undigested food. It’s, well, it’s just disgusting.
Cast this election in the overflowing bucket of reasons that millennials want nothing to do with the old guard; Why there’s such a stark divide between our generation and the one withering out ahead of us – clinging to their social security and musings of the “good ol’ days.”
Listen – I’m with you. I built my little soapbox on the importance of civic engagement, especially for young women, and I’ve turned my back to this election. I couldn’t find the words to urge people to vote one way or another because even having to put into words why one shouldn’t vote for Trump felt like an assault on my intelligence. And yours. I was just so disappointed in us, in America, in our society, for even getting to a place like this.
And for those of you reading from your flats in the UK, I’m talking to you as well. Keeping out refugees was a major (if not main) selling point for those who voted for Brexit. The push to leave was lead by right-wing groups positioned strongly against immigration – on keeping some of the 65 million displaced persons wandering the globe looking for small shreds of kindness and decency out. Smh, Britain.
But let’s zoom out for a moment and look at what’s going on in these two countries from space, from deep inside the cosmos. Let’s refresh our perspective with us positioned as the spec of dust tumbling through the sands of time that we are. To keep ourselves from getting discouraged, to prevent unplugging, let’s make this all mean something.
Carl Sagan, American astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author and all around galactic badass, created something called the Cosmic Calendar to better understand and visualize the chronology of the Universe as we know it. He condensed all of time, all 13.8 billion years of it, onto one calendar year, with the Big Bang happening on January 1st at midnight. Looking at this timeline you have the Milky Way forming in May, photosynthesis first getting down in October, mammals showing up to the party around December 26th, and anatomically modern humans (that’d be us) appearing on December 31st at 11:54 PM – six minutes until midnight at the tail end of that year.
Guys, we’re…babies. We’re new here. We’re still figuring it out and yes we’re fucking it up but look, we’re fresh out the cosmic womb! On this timeline Christ was born five seconds ago!
And one human life lasts the literal blink of an eye.
What is going on globally is a reflection and a representation of what is going on with us evolutionarily. In the words of kooky psychic Danielle Egnew, this election is “…an exterior representation of what we have going on in other levels of consciousness.” Periods of human evolution do not exist in a vacuum. This election is not just about this election – it’s about our collective conscious evolution. It’s about how we’re choosing to evolve our species – what values we want to reflect, and the species we want to become.
Egnew offers that Trump represents an energy that is on its way out. He has drudged up the underbelly of American (and human) character. He has brought forth the ugliest of us, representing our basest views of minorities and women. He has pulled it all to the surface, given it a face and a name, and you know what? Good. It needs to be brought to the surface. It needs to be brought to the surface so that it can be washed away. Like a zit. Like deeply imbedded blackheads. The ugly needs to come out of hiding so that it cannot infect us silently and without detection any longer.
We are entering into a phase of humanity where our old, violent, masculine approach to conquering the world with hate and fear just doesn’t cut it anymore. It was necessary for a while – we needed to evolve to combat our biggest threats (weather, wild predators, disease). We needed a masculine energized push toward establishing civilizations around the world. But now it’s been-there-done-that. Now it’s oh-shit pump the brakes. Now it’s time to settle into an era of feminine energy, of healing. We’ve conquered the world, now we need to make a safe home in it.
It is relevant that the U.S. may have the first female president at this specific moment in time. It is relevant that Theresa May became Prime Minister after Brexit. We are looking at two elections driven by fear and resulting in female leaders. Yes, this is me assuming Hillary gets elected.
Now back to your vote.
I won’t tell you who to vote for (vote for Hillary), but what I will tell you is not to vote from a place of fear. Dig down deep and vote with your consciousness. There are a lot of not-so-great things about Hillary Clinton. But for you this may be a choice between the lesser of two evils.
A vote for a third party candidate is a vote for Trump. “Symbolically” choosing neither Clinton nor Trump by voting third party is the biggest threat to Hillary’s victory. Third party candidates don’t win (at least not now) but they can throw elections if the other two candidates are close. In 2000, the support for Ralph Nader (Third Party) is what essentially handed the election to George W. Bush (Republican) over Al Gore (Democrat).
When it comes to our life on earth, unlike other creatures, we have a choice. And that’s a terrifying but absolutely beautiful thing. We can choose how we want humanity to evolve. Each and everyone one of us. We vote everyday with the way we live our lives. We cast our vote for evolving from a place of fear or evolving from a place of love everyday with the way we treat each other – with the perspective that colors even the smallest of our decisions.
It’s understandable to feel distraught over the way things are looking politically. But we have to see the worst sides of ourselves in order to change them. We cannot hide from them. We cannot bury our darkness and expect it not to make us cold. We cannot “sit this one out” because inaction is in and of itself a choice. Know that things are changing and that they are changing for the better, but that you have a responsibility to that process. You are a part of it.
And remember, our world is spinning through space at 1,040 miles per hour. It’s okay to sometimes feel dizzy.
Make sure you’re registered to vote at www.usa.gov/register-to-vote.
