“No other national election has evoked this kind of emotion.”
As a form of explanation, in the heat of the moment, during a discussion of politics, these words rose to the surface, and sat on my tongue, while I considered their veracity. My mind ticked through previous elections. Images grossly akin to Halloween masks, strolled across my mind’s eye; Reagan, Carter, Ford, Clinton, Bush I and II, and I realized I had felt passion for my candidate during each of these contests, as well. The words remain unsaid. And, still, I consider them…and have come believe the words to be true in an intangibly unsettling way.
In years past, my choice of candidate was usually accompanied by a sure feeling of being “right”. As I considered the men running for President, the decision was a simple one, based on my beliefs and life experience.
“Do you want what’s hiding behind curtain “A” or curtain “B”?” Monty Hall’s face leered under a battered fedora as he spun a shiny black cane.
“Curtain “A”!” My voice rang true with the force of my convictions.
“Is that your final answer?” The question came in the form of endless, expensively produced commercials touting the merits of the one not chosen.
“Yes! That is my final answer!” And it was.
This time around, when asked the question, I find my voice wavering as my eyes search a distant point in the room, and my chest fills with a need for hope. And, therein, lies the difference.
The need for hope; not a full-blown, fist-clenching, flag-waving hope, but a need for hope. A look out the yawning door of an airplane, just before the jump, with the sincere desire that the parachute will function when called upon. That first tentative, pitch-black step away from the side of the bed towards the spot on the carpet where the dog might be sleeping. The catch of breath, when the numbers are called, as the ticket shakes inside a needy hand. The look on the face of one beaten down, afraid to trust an outstretched hand.
As my octogenarian friend frequently laments, “I’ve never seen things this bad.”, I realize it’s no wonder so many of us are uncertain. Nothing in our life experience has prepared us for our current condition, and our beliefs have been challenged by almost a decade of half-truths and outright lies told by those in whom we were forced to rely. We are the ones beaten down, afraid to trust.
On Tuesday, I will stand in line for hours, with hundreds of others in search of hope, and the mere presence of the crowd, as I scan it, will invoke these words: