Dayton Daily News

Here is what was published in today's Dayton Daily News.  It's my goal to really tackle writing this year and immerse myself in this fine community!

My husband, two kids and I moved to the Dayton area a year and a half ago from Chicago, and as a newly inducted Ohio voter, I felt the weight of my vote this election.  I took this enormous responsibility to heart and spent most of the election in limbo, quietly listening, actively not listening at other times, and just genuinely trying to find answers to lead me to a decision.  I tried to block out the obnoxious noise of the election to focus on the election.

But there is a stigma attached to indecisiveness, especially in the arena of politics.  I’ve come to learn that being undecided does not show thoughtful consideration in the eye of most voters; it shows naivety, gullibility or lack of intelligence and awareness.  

Being decided on a vote, on the other hand, has a warm, fuzzy feeling attached to it.  Being committed to an answer leaves us feeling confident and strong in our convictions. It implies that we’ve done our homework and have gathered all the information needed.  It is a perceived stamp of intelligence, and as tempting as it was to join this comfort, I remained in voter’s purgatory for nearly all of the election, cringing at most of the information I vowed to ingest with contemplation. 

My being an undecided voter caught the attention of The New Yorker magazine that sent a photographer to be embedded in our house for four straight days to investigate what in the world causes a voter to be undecided.  I was an anomaly—an undecided voter is one thing, but an undecided OHIO voter?  Alert the media!

I teach critical thinking skills to my English composition students at Sinclair Community College.  Students look as though they were kicked in the guts as I tell them they must listen to the other side of their argument before they can write a sound, level-headed argument essay. I recently asked a student, “Why is it so hard listening to people who don’t think the same as you?” His answer was alarming:  “Because they’re wrong.  That’s a fact.”

I can most certainly understand this nineteen-year-old student, as I am quite certain I had the same stubborn stance in my younger days. However, it made me look at the election process in the same way—we often come to conclusions—a vote—long before the facts are presented to us.  We skew these opinions and convictions into facts and truths, when in reality they are personal attachments, beliefs and our egos. 

It takes a release of our egos to be critical thinkers who challenge ourselves to see beyond our own self-interests and allow opposing views to make their way in without infuriating us.  That is not to say we should agree with everything we hear.  But we do tend to listen to and embrace views that validate our own thinking, and we rally against anything that steps outside this cozy circle.  It is much easier and fun to show allegiance to one side and look for evidence to further prove the other side is wrong and maybe even ridiculous and moronic.  It is much more difficult to open the slammed doors in our brains, letting even off-kilter points of view make their way into our consideration.  It demands we think and not simply comfortably follow.   

It’s a dirty little secret that I was undecided for so long.  I would politely sit through pep talks from liberal friends about how Obama is amazing and Romney is nothing but a money-hungry jerk who wants to make the rich richer.  On the converse, I would respectfully sit through spiels from conservative friends who touted Romney’s plan and warned that Obama is nothing but a socialist who wants everyone to be on welfare.

Isn’t there any gray area in politics?  Maybe Romney could be right about this and Obama right about that?  Does it have to be that only one candidate can be absolutely right about everything and the other candidate is absolutely wrong about everything and is nothing but downright horrible, ridiculous and vindictive? Does life really deal in such absolutes?

Now that the election is over, we all have to be okay with the outcome. If your guy didn’t win, take a good look at the guy who did win because he is now your guy.   If your candidate didn’t become the president, you have a choice.  You can either go into the next four years with the outlook of “He will do nothing right ever” or you can open your mind, sit back and be pleasantly surprised to find that the person running our country will do something right.  Try to find one thing he might not mess up.  Start with that.