The Crossroads

Woody Allen once said, “More than any time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”

As I hesitantly filled in the last remaining bubble on my ballot this morning, the one that has been vacant while the others have been completed for several days, I felt the weight of the crossroads Woody Allen spoke of. I wasn’t thrilled with my choices. For a long time now, it seems that we vote more against someone or something rather than for someone or something.

I would consider myself an informed voter. I have spent hours learning about the issues and candidate’s positions and revised positions. I have watched debates, read commentary and opinion, and still was undecided. I have listened to friends and neighbors express their thoughts. I agreed with some and disagreed with others. In the end, I found myself agreeing with some positions of the candidates and disagreeing with some positions of the candidates. In my mind, there was no clear favorite. I could support some of what each would do and complain about the rest.

I am reminded of a story of a parent whose teenagers wanted to go to something that would mostly be good but have some inappropriate things there. The parent made a batch of brownies with the normal recipe but added just a little bit of a secret ingredient. The teens began eating, loving the brownies until the parent told the teens that the secret ingredient was just a little bit of dog poo. Just a little bit can spoil the batch. There are great things and good things about the policies and visions of each candidate but there also seems to be something that doesn’t “taste” right in their recipes that leaves me not wanting to “eat” any of it.

In the end, I ignored the candidates all together and looked solely at the platform and policies they propose in hopes that they will actually do what they say they will and voted for those ideals overall that I think will be best for our community, my family and me.

As I dropped my ballot into the mailbox, I said a little prayer for our country, state and communities.
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I heard from many sides that a vote for so and so will take our country to hell. I wrote in my journal when I was in college, “The problem with a one-way ticket to hell is that you can’t turn around until you get there. With a ticket to hell that has a lot of stops, you travel slower and can turn around before you arrive. Unfortunately, not many of the frequent stop tickets are sold.” Our country has a ticket with frequent stops. Each election gives us the opportunity to assess where we are, where we are headed and change direction if we don’t like where we are going. Regardless of the outcome of this election, we will adjust and hopefully correct our destination together.