LeliaThomas.Com

Reworking My Perspective

When you’ve done something for years, it’s difficult to just suddenly turn away from it. While plenty of us, thankfully, don’t suffer from addictions, all of us have unhealthy habits. Some of mine stand out to me more than others, but it’s good to address them every now and again to see if they can’t slowly be changed. The unhealthy habit that I’m tackling in recent months is one of distancing myself from politics. I still write about them and pay attention to them occasionally, but I’m trying hard to move away from that.

I don’t know when exactly it occurred to me, but it’s stuck with me of late that politics and the arguments held within are about like placebos. You believe you’re making a difference by informing the masses, but the masses will believe what they will, forever and ever more. For every opinion there will be an opposing one, and for each of the opinions there will be a million and one perspectives.

Some perspectives will be based solely on things like lobbying efforts, parroting another person(s), or trying to fit in with the crowd. Other perspectives will be based on private pains that no one will ever know. After all the arguing, no solution is ever found, because no one can ever, 100 percent prove any truth of a matter. Even on the rare occasions when you can, there are still people who are convinced of conspiracies and lying. The funny thing is that solutions never seem to matter to the world. We just find something new to feel hurt or angry about, whether we’ve ever received answers for a previous problem or not–something new to start a better, bigger argument. Oh, it’s sure to make the front pages!

Like most in the developed worlds, I’m guilty of believing my thoughts are important on some level. I’ve been brought up on the stories that my forefathers or groups of my people did things that actually mattered and made a difference. Oh, I still believe that’s possible, but not when so many people in the world are unwilling to collectively make positive changes. It’s a group effort, and, well, there’s not much of a group for now.

As I get older, different things matter to me–tangible things, which political worlds hold nothing of. Family matters to me; community matters to me. I think, beyond those two very close things, there’s not much else. Politics, or rather, government, won’t come to your rescue or be there even during the good times; it has always been that way; that’s nothing new. And not to sound overly pessimistic, but in all honesty, most of us are just blips on a screen–if even that much–to the men we give power to, and yet we wonder why our words matter so little.

Modern day American democracy (and others, for that matter) isn’t for, by, and of the people. That’s what I’ve really had to get my head around. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it an illusion, but it’s somewhere along those lines, and our media helps us none by fueling fires from all political and philosophical sides, all over the world. All for the sake of a good show and good ratings and big money. It’s not about you or me or the health of mankind. It’s about pocketbooks and popularity.

It’s hard, perhaps even impossible, to break away from these modern hindrances that unfortunately help to mold our views of the world. And it has occurred to me that I’ve taken, and given, the wrong advice in recent years. I was told, and then taught others, that staying on top of matters and staying “in the know” was vital. It kept you from being taken advantage of, or so I thought. I believed listening and knowing and baring your opinion mattered in the grand scheme of things.

Somehow, perhaps in my own foolishness, I wanted to listen to the words of men at the top of the ladded and yet keep independent, uninfluenced thoughts and perceptions. Unfortunately, you can’t be an independent thinker, making decisions and philosophies based on personal experiences, if others are always telling you what is going on and what to think. I’d rather not be another parrot–not for any man, group or country.

So I’m altering myself and the way I’ve lived for several years now. I can’t even begin to count how many times I’ve started entries here, only to delete them, because it’s senseless to express my opinion on something that will never come down to “my level” in society. I still have my moments–they typically get emailed as rants and raves to my closest friends (poor dears)–but I hope to erase most of that from my life.

How many hours, days, maybe even years have you spent listening or dwelling on matters that are entirely out of your hands? How much of your time has been dedicated to the words of men who do not even know you exist?

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