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I have decided to attempt daily to write for 20 minutes (or more) about what’s on my mind. I’m hoping this grows, and others will write their dear friend here, too. Maybe it seems a little pathetic, but I find that when I talk with people without a filter on, they often look at me like I’m nuts. Here is a place to write to an imaginary friend, who both understands me, and takes the time to really try to understand what I am saying. In some ways, this is prayer for me.
Dearest friend,
I miss you. I am sitting here, after a glorious cotton candy sunset up on the hill. I feel rejuvenated by a longer-than-planned wander around my mountain on skis. I am at home here, and I belong here as much as any place. Just looking out at the views, and feeling all the memories I have made in all the places I see in a vista stretching for 50 miles. Somehow, against all odds, I have put in roots in such a strangely chosen place, and yet I remain free and curious.
I am also pensive, since my mind fogged up all this week after a ski trip to take advantage of Monday’s snow, and Chloe took off to visit with friends in Camden. I feel like the bottom sort of fell out of my energy levels (which often happens after a big ski day) but it evokes all the old fears of chronic fatigue, of failure, of having an ambition and feeling like I am separated from it by a foot of plexiglass.
Yesterday was my last day to withdraw my name from the race for my town’s select board. I did not withdraw. I am running, unopposed, for a two-year term on my town’s select board. This is part of how, and why, I feel like I belong here – I am not an imposter. I have been called to something and I have answered.
I always felt I was preparing myself for great things, and that I had all these talents which I wished would be recognized and utilized (I know, so immature to confess at 35 years old). I feel this is a problem generally: people’s talents aren’t being recognized, and they are not being engaged to do meaningful work.
Well it happened to me here, in this small way, and I appreciate it. A neighbor I respect asked me to run, and many people said nice things as I went around collecting signatures. It was a pretty buoyant process – I am smiling just thinking about how much it defied expectations of meanness and closed-mindedness from my constituents. People in this town are wonderful, even the grumpy ones.
I recently had a brief conversation with one of the folks involved in town government for a long time. He reminded me to keep it simple: my job is to represent the wishes of the town. This sits a little rough with me. I have thought about this a lot and I can’t help but feel that we do pick specialists for a reason. Our doctors and constructions contractors being two examples where you don’t want an amateur or novice. Why should government be any different?
That said, I do appreciate his reminder about our form of government being one of the oldest in continuance, and the closest thing to a true representative democracy that exists today. I think the key is the level of savvy in the townspeople. TJ agreed, and said it in a smarter way than I could.
“…wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.” -Thomas Jefferson
The issue with this is that many of the things which attract notice have already gone terribly wrong, or have been damaging to our interests for so long that now it is a monumental task to set things right.
“Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree.” – TJ, again
This is where I think the rub lies – that the role of experts is to lay things out, to develop systems of thought and gather important data, in such a way as to help the people be better informed. Somehow we have ended up doing this all wrong, with so-called experts in seemingly every discipline inventing new words to make ides seem more complicated, rather than simplifying things so that people can understand them.
So I see my job as to exert the will of the people, but also to keep them informed, and to help give them relevant information and present them with decisions which it in their responsibility to make, but not necessarily to think about beforehand.
Time will tell if I do a decent job of it. Chloe is back home and it’s time to prepare dinner. Shepard’s Pie tonight.
Love, Brad