let this be the week | you stop griping and start voting

[gorgeous image via fellow fellow]

I think I speak for all of us when I say I'm more than tired of the barrage of hateful/short-sighted/tense political exchanges I've seen on social media throughout this election. I would consider myself a very open-minded and tolerant person, and yet even I find my blood pressure rising simply from seeing one ignorant post or comment.

Listen, I'm all for political discourse. But actual discourse is a rare sight these days as it's far more difficult for us to open our minds and entertain an opposing view point than it is to simply stand on our Facebook soapboxes and attack a certain person, party, or belief system. I don't do well with tension in my daily life, which means I REALLY don't do well with tension in the world everywhere I turn.

So I think it's about time we all stop talking and start acting. Rather than post or tweet or blog about why you believe so vehemently that your candidate deserves the highest position of power in our nation, how about you humbly march yourself to the polls and simply cast your vote. After all, that's how someone wins, right? It's not whichever candidate has more Facebook posts attacking him loses, correct? Okay just checking because that's really how it feels sometimes.

If you want to know who I'm voting for, it's easy enough to figure out since I've done nothing to hide it. However, you won't find one single post of mine that specifically attacks the candidate I won't be voting for because frankly I don't think that adds anything positive or valuable to the greater conversation.

There's no doubt that elections are a completely different cultural experience now that social media is everywhere. And I'm certainly not looking forward to the flood of either celebratory or angry "I'm moving to Canada" statuses that we will inevitably have to endure on Tuesday night.

Either way, though, I wake up each day incredibly thankful that we live in a country where we have a choice in the matter. There's a large group of people in the world that aren't as lucky.

Happy voting, friends, and let's all remember this week that first and foremost we are all Americans.