Greetings from the Land of Enchantment

Breathing Room

One watches the political process in America and wonders, "Can't you just give a guy a break?" In less that 24 hours, talking heads from both the right and the left are slicing and dicing when there isn't even anything to cut into yet--and you realize, sitting in your office or at home, that it's all just spin. They have to talk about something--so they just attack because that seems more 'newsworthy', more 'neutral'. It is the demand of the medium itself--the 24-hour news cycle.

But even beyond the demands of the medium, it is a mind-set, cultivated for so long that even as 'change has come', we remain the same.

But somewhere in the middle there has to be some breathing room, some rational discourse, some simple foot work. Without clinging to ideals nor abandoning them to greed and opportunism, without crying out "I'll walk through hell before I allow x, y, or z" and thus completely undermining someone's caliber and capacity nor placing someone on such a high pedestal that they're bound to come tumbling down. Imagine giving someone the benefit of the doubt. Imagine a life of neutrality: moving from the negative to the positive and then acting from the neutral.

It happens everywhere--not just on the grand political stage but also in the mundane, everyday life. But perhaps as we watch a true leader rise above the fray and dialogue and listen and then act, we, too, will have an opportunity to mature, to grow up, and to give ourselves and each other a little breathing room.

posted by Sat Purkh Kaur Khalsa @ 11:45 AM