Kindness For President

You might have noticed by now that it's an election year.  If, by the grace of God you forget this fact for three blissful seconds, don't worry... Facebook will remind you.

The choices -- according to an informal poll of my newsfeed -- are your drunk uncle Donald, who got his start in politics when he saw that the Misogynist Party was not properly represented (votes for boobs!... I mean women!) and career criminal Hillary McMob Boss.  If you really want to flush America down the toilet, you can "throw away your vote" by backing Gary "Weed for Aleppo" Johnson or Evan "San Dimas High School Football Rules!" McMullin, who threw his hat in the ring for Junior Class President and accidentally ended up on the presidential ballot.

But I digress.

The point is, there's a lot of name calling going on.  A LOT of name calling.  Like, if my Facebook feed were my children, they would all get sent to their rooms for approximately 365 years level of name calling.  Which is decidedly uncool.  I mean, if you can't support your candidate without saying "All [other candidate's] supporters deserve to be slowly devoured by flesh eating bacteria" then there is something very, very wrong with you.

So I'll let you in on a little secret.  Ready...?  I don't care which candidate you support in the election.  Like, not even a little.  You know what I care about?

What kind of person you are.

Are you compassionate?  Are you kind?  Do you try to understand where others are coming from?  When someone's views conflict with your own, do you malign their character and insult their intelligence?  Or do you listen and consider and learn?

The fact is that there are good people who support Clinton and there are good people who support Trump.  And no matter which candidate you vote for, we can all be friends.  We can all choose kindness.  We can all choose to listen.  We can all choose to love and to help and uplift.

So let's throw away the pitchforks.  Choose kindness.

It wins every time.