A conversation with a volunteer

Yesterday when I arrived at the Gulfport library to drop off some books I was accosted, politely, by a volunteer registering voters for the upcoming local and Federal elections. I was rude. I sped up my step, racing towards the doors while angrily stating that I didn't have enough millions to make my vote heard so, what's the point? Once in the library with the books and quiet information surrounding me, the history and speculation sitting quietly in their shelves, I started to regret my brusque behavior.

I found a few new pieces of brain candy, new fiction I hadn't read yet by authors I didn't know. With a silent prayer of thanks to the gods of literacy I took my prizes to the check out counter, flirted gently with the older woman (and I'm sure quite beautiful when in her prime) behind the counter and realized that I had regained my sense of humor and balance. I found that I was ashamed with myself for having vented my ire at someone who was doing a job because he believed in the system and in what he was doing to support it.

Upon exiting the library, the first thing I did was seek the man out and offer apologies for my rude behavior. What ensued was a brief but enlightening conversation about the observations he had made in the course of performing his station. He shared with me, without rancor, the reactions he had gotten so far and his take on the demography indicated.

One of the first things he told me was that my reaction was not unusual by any means. As a matter of fact, he told me, most of the people whom he had approached had something to say about the Supreme Court decision to allow corporations the vote by delimiting their campaign contributions. The basic statement usually indicated that the individual vote was now without weight or meaning. This, he informed me, cut across age, gender and racial lines in a way that indicated a uniting of the majority. In a general kind of way, he continued, the only ones who had anything positive to say about what he was doing there were the ones who had stepped out of new, expensive vehicles and were well dressed and groomed. This group, he observed, were in a distinct minority.

When we were done, I got on my bicycle and slowly made my way back home, thinking about the conditions we find ourselves in now and the circumstances that brought us here. I know I don't have all of the information needed to make a truly informed opinion, but I can at least report on what I'd heard. Without going into the arguments that divide us, I have seen something that unites the majority of us; we, as a people and a country, are at a point in history that will either make us heroes or villains to the generations to come.

We have a chance to do what is right, or wrong, for the future. What we do with this chance will define our place in history. I, for one, would like to know that the greater good will be done for the greater numbers of us, now and into the future. What is happening now has historical precedence and the results of those times are recorded for all to see, in the quiet shelves of libraries as well as in the collective consciousness of the people, the histories we learned in school. I have hope for the future and fear as well. Can we get past the noise of a few so that the will of the many can be done? I sincerely hope so.
No one gets out of here alive, so live it like ya mean it.