Courageous Living

Several times these last couple of weeks, I’ve thought about writing on a certain topic, but was always deterred somehow. Now, as I have the time to write, I cannot recall many of those topics that I have thought of in the recent past. Let’s see…maybe I can remember some of them at least enough to give you the general sense of what I’ve been thinking.

Courageous living. I know I’ve talked about that before, but I continue to see example after example of courageous living in the care home where I work. And I see it on the part of staff as well as the residents, who survive each day at a poverty level or near poverty level existence, balancing raising kids with working sometimes two or three jobs and just keeping everything afloat.

These are the people that Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama say they are fighting for and want to help. However, I hold no illusions that either one of them (or anyone else in government, for that matter) really know what’s happening right now to those families. Nor do I hold any illusions that government can be responsive to the needs of these people, even if it does know what is going on.

Because in order to truly know the lives of these people, one has to do more than shake hands and pause for a photo. It takes, I think, a long term relationship with people in their own environment to see the fear, courage, trepidation, hope, promise, and anxiety of these people. And somehow, I don’t see Mr. McCain working at my job in maintenance, unclogging toilets, pulling weeds, and taking out the trash, or Mr. Obama becoming a Certified Nurse Aide, making beds, feeding residents, and cleaning the butts of folks who could be his grandparents.

(Caveat here. In no way do I wish to minimize the service of Mr. McCain and his 5+ years in a prison camp and torture house. He will forever be a hero in my mind, and I will always marvel at his [and others] guts, determination, hope, and endurance during a time when by far the most of us would not even be here to tell about it.)

(Nor do I wish to minimize the service of Mr. Obama during the time when he genuinely tried, I think, to help those in greater need in the Chicago area as a “community organizer”. Such jobs are taken on by few, and even fewer manage to make a real difference.)

(I don’t know enough about the background of Joe Biden to make any statements regarding his service or lack of it.)

Gov. Sarah Palin is about as close as it gets to that kind of thing. And although she has been insulated from some of that for awhile, her family and living situation still present challenges to her and her husband that others also have to face. I think that may be part of the great attraction (or loathing) to her on the part of the nation, and no one seems to get that.

Attraction by those who also have challenges in life and living and see her as a courageous woman with a (mostly) functional family that they would like to emulate and perhaps even be a part of. They know she has “something” that keeps her going, and want to know more about it.

Loathing by those who cannot fathom why someone would deliberately choose to raise a Down’s Syndrome child, who think she is stupid for having a religious viewpoint that includes God in the plans for her and the universe, and who see her as the antithesis of all that their warped and jaded vision of the world is and can be (or not).

This blog started out as a list of those things I’ve been thinking about; as often happens, I got off on a subject and just kept going. Whether or not I continue with the list, I just don’t know. Writing is that way, some times.