free your mind

Ok so bear with me here...first you need to check out my pic of the day - yes that is what josh wore to school today....he absolutely NEVER matches - this was actually pretty close, but the mismatched socks tell the tale.  you see, he has inherited from me, among other things, a complete disregard for style.  i made a very deliberate choice once i became my own woman, that i would never give a shit what anyone thought about what i wore (outside of work) - and i rarely, if ever, and most certainly NEVER when i play anything, MATCH.  its a complete rebellion against my completely structured mother, who has never gone anywhere wearing anything that was not totally together.  it's a small rebellion, but one i enjoy :)  and i really, honestly don't care - if you look at me and see a ridiculous outfit, okay....i can usually agree with you....but i'll bet u its comfortable - or funny - or both.  where am i going with this?  its just one more way that we are judged....how things LOOK on the outside, at a glance is generally all the public is interested in....you need to WANT to look deeper to get to the real, true meaning of anything.  

this is my segue to IOWA....crazy but true.  i'm not sure who follows what, but lets just say this - the republican primary has mostly been a farcical adventure of who can make the most flubs in public....with that being said - there HAS to be a nominee, and some of these people have very valid beliefs and credentials - if you smashed them all into one person, we'd be all set.  i have to say, i think the role of the media in these things completely distorts reality, but that's a whole different story.  what i want to touch on here is HOW we go about making our decisions.  i can tell you that i don't match, but i choose not to - it's a ridiculously immature reaction to my totally structured upbringing.... it's not right or wrong (i don't think), but you can not imagine the number of people who feel compelled to tell me i don't match - it drives them nuts.  like i'm blind.....i got it.  what is happening in IOWA and everywhere else i imagine is that people are deciding the fate of our FUTURE based on these ridiculous impressions.  my favorite example so far (and i'll ignore the whole hillary hair debacle of 2008) relates not exactly to appearance, but to my next favorite topic, religion. 

"while i agree with a great deal of Mitt Romney's policies, i would NEVER VOTE FOR HIM 

BECAUSE HE IS MORMON, and i'm a baptist and that goes against my beliefs" - an idiot on MSNBC

now let me ask you - do most people CHOOSE their religion?  because i believe most people grow up within the culture of their religion - yes people convert or lose their faith, but the vast majority of religious people are the same religion that they were born to......so why is THAT the key focal point of our republican primary - our candidates are either TOO christian or NOT christian ENOUGH....isn't this the GOVERNMENT????  i would rather you tell me that you refuse to vote for mitt romney because he wears jeans pulled up to his nipples, so clearly he hasn't moved past 1984 socially, and therefore isn't qualified to make decent choices for our youth....its a ridiculous argument, but at least THAT is CHOICE he makes.  And why is it okay for freaking Newt Gingrich to have horrible HAIR and be divorced 3 times??? but he's a more socially acceptable candidate because he's a "christian"....i JUST DONT GET IT!!

whatever happened to separation of church and state, anyway??  and what do you think that baptist woman knows about mormonism anyway?  do you think she's researched it, or is just making a blanket statement because that's what she is supposed to say?   

FREE YOUR MIND, and THE REST WILL FOLLOW (i hope)

in much the same way our political system is completely ineffectual, our electoral process is as well.  as long as people are making choices based on ONE THING - no matter what it is....i'll only vote pro-life, pro-choice, pro-gun, anti-gun, pro-medicare, anti-war....fill in the blanks...we are NEVER going to balance our budget and become the self sufficient country we once were.   We are less concerned with educating our children than we are in whether or not you can do stem cel research....i don't know what the answer is, i only know that what we are doing now is not working.....and that we need to be a part of the solution.....we are not all ever going to agree, no matter what.  but there has to be a time where compromise is more important than agenda.

my freshman year at brown, the way we decided to make our "psych tape" (yes tape) was that everyone got to pick one song and no matter what it was, it went on the tape.....now i'm telling you the only thing people disagree more on that politics is music!!  i will never forget that tape, because prior to that year i had never heard of Van Morrison, and i know amy mulligan had never heard of Metallica.  so here we are at our first game warming up and out of the speaker ON THE ROOF blares, INTO THE MYSTIC!! i  mean really?? for a psych tape??? shoot me now, right??  and then 3 songs later, out blares SEEK and DESTROY!!  i thought amy was going to throw up - she covered her ears and everything....hilarious!!  the moral of this story is that 4 years later, i LOVED van morrison, and amy mulligan danced around our locker room to metallica......so we can all CHANGE and grow together, but we have to be willing to accept each others differences and maybe actually take the time to LISTEN to what's important to someone other than ourselves.  i still can't hear john mellencamps SMALL TOWN without thinking of tara harrington....another AWFUL psych tape choice, but it motivated HER and it was her choice - and today i love that damn song .... if for no other reason than it reminds of those incredibly different women that were all motivated by very different things, and came from amazingly different backgrounds.... who came together despite our differences because we had a common goal....something that was bigger than each us of individually, and meant something important to us all.

what could be more important, right now, to all of us than fixing what we have broken?

at this point id rather see all of the millions and millions of dollars that are being spent on this primary funneled back into our schools....  id like to see a ballot that just listed items with no names or pictures or background.....

candidate 1 is a fiscal republican but a social democrat - he has voted this way.......

candidate 2 is a fiscal and social republican - he has voted this way....

candidate 3 is a fiscal and social moderate - he has voted this way.....

maybe then we would actually start having to figure out what we believe and why - and people would stop voting based on ONE THING.  it's time we all started educating ourselves so that our children have something worth inheriting!  because at this rate, the only thing they will inherit is crippling debt and an ineffectual system.  it's time for the THINKERS of our generation to rise up - it's ok and NECESSARY to make change when change is called for - it's not someone else's job - its OURS.

"the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results" 

albert einstein