Friendships and Politics

Hi there! Sorry it's been so long! Again, I'm blaming my broken computer for my absence, but really I've kind of struggled for inspiration. This past month I kind of got into a rut. I would work in the garden or in the kitchen all day, then work on my Capstone at night, then call someone I love, and then go to bed. Rinse. Repeat.

Except a lot happened during this rut. First, let's talk about the happy. One of my best friends got married.

Karen and Austin (aka Caramel and Vanilla, aka Kaustin, aka cutest newly weds) were the first of my friends to fall in love in college and now the first of them to get married. It was also the first time I saw my friends since we graduated over a year ago. So much had changed and yet nothing really did.

What changed? The political scene. One of my favorite parts of college was becoming friends with such diverse, interesting, talented people. Countries represented at the wedding included Mongolia, Vietnam, Canada, Dominican Republic, and of course Karen from Bolivia. To me that's amazing. At the wedding, we danced to hispanic songs ate Bolivian food, and enjoyed the multicultural experience. I will always cherish that night.

Except with this political scene, I don't know how many more memories like this I will be able to hold. With the decision to get rid of DACA and the anti-minority sentiments in Charlottesville, I have been thinking over and over again, how did we get here? And how do we get back to appreciating talent, strength, and diversity?

First, what do I mean by "here." To me, I believe we live in a country where people are struggling so hard to find meaning in our own lives, that it is easy to forget that everyone around us is just trying to do the same. And when I don't have the time to consider what is going on around me neither in my immediate community nor the larger political system, then it is easy to become apathetic.

Apathy--not caring about what in the world is going around you--stems from 2 major problems. First is education. Most schools have no civic education and when history classes may touch on current events, it is so challenging to find an article with no bias that you can trust that it is easy for people to either be mistaken or just give up. I think this goes hand in hand with the corruption of our political system, how hard it is to vote, and how little our votes seem to matter.

The second problem is the need to choose a side. I see this even here at AMI. Some people have strong convictions and work hard to get others to believe what they believe. Others listen to these convictions and don't have any strong feeling one way or the other. Most people have a combination of strong convictions and issues they admit they do not know best. I think we all need that balance, but mostly we have to allow that in our politicians.

For me, the way I want to tackle these problems is to not be apathetic. To vote in every election and tell people who I am voting for and why. I also want to get into the education system and connecting students to the world they live in, rather than the abstract mathematic or historical world. And while I mainly want to do this by connecting them to the land, I think the land is just where it starts.

So I guess this whole blog post was kind of a tangent. But the political scene has been rough on everyone, even those isolated from cities or civilization. I am excited to get back into areas where I can tackle apathy one conversation at a time.