For Me and You

As someone who graduated with a degree in public relations, I find myself always evaluating my communication. I tend to over explain almost everything, afraid that I am being unclear. That’s why I felt like I needed to define the purpose of this blog last week. Knowing what I want to say, I am wondering who I am trying to say it to. I am no political analyst. I don’t have the right to claim I’m much more knowledgeable than everyone else. My message is simple. It’s not divisive and I’m not trying to change minds or provoke a fight. You see, I don’t think I’m qualified to change the minds of people who have strong feelings. And I hate fighting.

So who am I writing to? Well, it turns out that most of the people I associate with are not well informed on the issues I am passionate about. When I state my feelings I am usually met with mild questions that reflect misinformation, if I am met with anything besides a blank stare. You see, we are not the state senators or the wealthy. We are not movie stars, liberal arts college students, or philosophers. We are the parents, church goers, and self supporters. And for most of us, our lives are also self-fulfilling. We are happy with the choices we have made. We are happy with our families. We are happy in our faith.

That means, very often, that understanding current events is simply not a priority. Our priorities are our jobs, our children and our churches. We don’t like the direction the country is headed right now, but we cannot be passionate about it because we need to remain positive to be the best support for those we love. We like to be informed, but we find ourselves studying the patterns of emergent literacy in young children or techniques for decluttering our closets instead of politics. You see, we are in control of teaching our kids to read and keeping our homes well-maintained. We vote, but the overall direction of the country feels completely out of our hands.

I am writing for us. For me, because expressing these things makes me feel empowered. It’s a sense of personal fulfillment that makes me a better mother. For everyone I care about, it’s because congress has just spent more that $13,000 dollars for each man, woman and child in this country. I believe, as John McCain stated, that, “…so far it's been pretty obvious that the stimulus package is an exercise in generational theft.” I want our children to be free. I hope parents will take time to try to understand these issues of fundamental liberty, so that our children will have the same freedom we enjoy.