vote like everything matters
/To hear Brandi read this essay, visit the Expand Your Us Youtube channel, or click here: https://youtu.be/kcIWeGnt_Tw
I am the kind of parent who likes to find a phrase that will work in a variety of situations, over a wide span of a kid’s growing years, and then repeat it, relentlessly. This habit infuriates my children. When I instinctively use such a phrase, I often privately marvel at my own wisdom: “I started saying this to him when he was 2, and it still packs a perfect punch now that he is 17!! I am brilliant!” Then I look up and see him rolling his eyes, and I watch, with dismay, as the garage door to his soul closes, in my eager, proud face.
Multi-use phrases aren’t for everyone, but I love them. They became even more important to me in the last few years, as I have leaned into trying to practice a more contemplative life. I am mostly still addicted to productivity and action, but I have grown in my practice of meditation, learning to slow down, to breathe, to observe, to listen to my thoughts, emotions and bodily sensations before I take action that can damage—or protect—others. In this way of being in the world, mantras are useful. They help center you, reminding you of who you are and how you want to be with others, rather than simply reacting in anger, exhaustion, fear or despair.
Sometimes, I pick a mantra, hoping it will Jedi-mind trick me into being a better person. “Lead with love” (instead of my natural habit of trying to slay injustice like a dragon hunter) or “I am enough” (instead of my instinct to strive, to finish, to accomplish). Repeating a phrase doesn’t magically change business as usual, but it does offer a helpful reminder, a gentle or sledge-hammer-like nudge that says, “Hey, on your best days, and in your best moments, you know there is a better way. Choose that way now.”
With early voting underway and Election day a week away, it feels like the entire country needs a reminder that we are more than our instincts. We are not automatons. You don’t have to roll your eyes or grind your teeth when you encounter a sign or a person advocating for the party you find useless. You don’t have to raise your voice when someone praises a position you find destructive. You don’t have to shut down when you have the chance to engage someone spewing hate, or repeating a lie, or disregarding the sanctity of another person’s being. We are more than our instincts.
To be clear, I am not advocating ‘staying out of it.’ This position, fueled by apathy and privilege, has somehow become a respected view. I couldn’t disagree more. In fact, this brings us to my real life mantra, one that I did not choose, but that my husband identified for me: “Everything matters.”
Sometimes he throws this at me like an arrow, as if to say, you are so exhausting. Everything CANNOT matter all the time. Sometimes you have to say no. Sometimes it isn’t your fight, or yours to correct. Sometimes the thing in your own house has to matter more than the thing out there.
Sometimes though, he murmurs it, tossing it like a life raft. We say it silently, like a prayer, eyes locked. Everything does matter:
Choosing to invest only in my community leads me to neither know nor care about others.
Normalizing difference leads to sharing our ‘mutual garment of destiny.’
Unkindness leads to inflicting pain.
Stopping to listen leads to understanding.
Dismissing another human leads to loss of life.
Elevating the value of different kinds of work leads to respect for all kinds of folks. Relentless ambition leads to greed-driven, destructive, power.
Defensiveness destroys relationships.
Staying out of it leads to taking no responsibility for those around you.
We live in a democratic republic, and our democracy is built on the idea that everything matters. Elections provide us with the chance to vote our own interests, but they also demand that we advocate for the we. The democratic ideal leads us forward with shared governance, but it also almost works backward, reminding us that we are all in this together. No one is an island, as Pope Francis and others have said. We share resources, neighborhoods, schools, places of worship and leaders.
To pretend that I can vote on one issue, or my tax bracket, or against the thing that hurt me, is to forget that because we live in a democracy, everything matters. If you vote as if you are the only American whose interests matter, then you are likely unsafe for others, and you have rejected democracy. Everything matters, and the impact of every interest on all the people must be considered.
If I had to sum up my husband’s life matra, it would be, “Everything’s gonna be ok.” He has a miraculous gift to be unbothered. He trusts…himself to survive?...the world to right itself?...God to protect us? He teaches me that life does go on, whether or not I exhausted myself trying to fix the thing I had to fix. He teaches me that much is to be gained through loss, through failure. He teaches me that sometimes accepting my own powerlessness is the most courageous act of all. He teaches me that investing in people helps soften the blow when things aren’t ok. That we all desperately need each other, and that being loved does not require earning my keep.
Middle age—and countless griefs—have challenged these mantras. Crying out on our knees over senseless death, damaging others even when we tried to do everything right, we know now that everything is sometimes not okay.
Throwing ourselves at systems that continue to diminish others, speaking up against unchanging, stubborn injustice, working and failing to restore broken relationships, we now know nothing seems to change even when you live as if Everything Matters.
Like all good marriages, there is little beauty found in being right, but loads of wisdom in learning to learn from each other. When everything matters, everything will be ok. When we learn—in relationships, in our lived-out-faiths, and in our civic engagement—to expand our capacity to care, invest and act on behalf of others, we become part of the beloved community. When we do this, we build such strong relationships that we survive and resist and fail and achieve together. Everything really will be ok. These ideas both motivate us and temper us.
As we make a plan to vote in a pandemic, I share our mantras, broken as they are. As the world seems to unravel, I remind us of these ideas that are insufficient when they live in isolation. My hope is that we can find power and perspective when we hold them in tension: Take action on behalf of those around you as if everything matters. It does. Lean in to your community, sharing in joy and suffering, need and want, as if everything’s gonna be okay as long as we belong to one another. It will. (Vote.)
