Be Kind

At 6:00pm tonight, our say in the 2016 election will be complete. There will almost certainly be challenges to the result, so I don’t want to say this will all be over. But there will be nothing more we can do.

This has been a nasty election year, more so than any in my memory. I’ve read so many comments along the lines of “I don’t know how someone can vote X.” And I honestly worry about the lack of empathy we’ve shown towards each other. We need to try to understand each other if we want to move forward.

All around you there are people who did not vote the way you voted. They are not bad people. And it’s time to stop attacking them. By all means, the candidates are fair game. But we have to stop attacking each other. We have to stop getting personal.

I leave you with this passage from Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater: “Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”