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Dear Conservative and Liberal friends,
I am writing this letter as I cannot, for one more day, stand to bear witness to the phonies you have become.
Yes. You read that correctly.
Over the past several months you have morphed into complete fakes, frauds, and imposters. You are letting down your children, your coworkers, your country and yourself.
Sometimes the truth hurts. Sometimes friends need to be brutally honest with one another.
I can’t help but wonder, what happened to you? How did you ever lose such sight of yourself that you could allow a cold, hard, obnoxious and ravenous ego to slip into your safe space and hold the real you hostage? Like an addict functioning beneath a veil of drug-induced haze, I’ve watched this alter-ego rob you of your values, seize your intellect, shred your life-long friendships and even cut some of your family ties.
I can see the amount of time and effort you lend to feeding your insatiable appetite with juicy debate, tasteless rhetoric and spicy drama. For months now, I’ve watched you devour truth the size of a grain of salt and digest lie after lie, served up on a silver platter only to regurgitate every ounce of it back onto the plates of friends and foes, family and strangers alike.
You are chewing the fat, my friends. You are consuming the fake, processed commercialized crud that is corroding the arteries of life and love in this country. Aren’t you exhausted yet? Aren’t you running out of energy? Our human spirit cannot thrive on empty fodder alone. Our goodness, our exclusive authenticity requires whole, real and flavorful sustenance to feed our life verve and to enrich our existence.
My dear, important and worthy liberal and conservative friends, I know you. The real you. You are bigger and stronger than this ego that is holding you hostage. I beg of you, please do everything in your power to break away from your captor and run like hell, back to the safety of your true, authentic self.
Now more than ever before, we as a nation need you to be the change you wish to see in the world. We need you to live by example. We are desperate for your grassroots, anecdotal evidence and exclusive stories of lives well-lived, of lives lost, the stories of heartbreak born from hate and resurrection birthed from love. We must do what we can, with what we have, where we are.
Like a pebble dropped in the soft reflection of a still and silent pond, the ripple spreads outward, reaching far beyond the point of contact.
We need your valuable, calm insight, your personal hopes and vision for the future of our country, we need to learn about your past experiences. We need you to be vulnerable and strong and tolerant all at once. It’s no small task. But these are the tales, the realities, and the truths that have made our country great and will continue to make it even greater in the future.
What does this sort of work look like? That is entirely up to you and the issues that weigh heavy on your heart. Maybe it means you’ll volunteer to campaign for your local alcohol, drug addiction and mental health services levy. Perhaps you’ll spearhead a food drive or fundraising campaign for a local soup kitchen or women’s shelter. Maybe you’ll foster a child or support someone who does. Do you rock at growing vegetables? Build a community garden in your neighborhood or work with the city to designate space for a public food forest. Grab a pencil and scratch out a letter to the editor at your local newspaper, share your vision to change something big or small in your town or even in your nation.
Simply put, this is the time. This is the time to band together. Ask you yourself what you can do to help in this life. If you aren’t in a position to give time and financial support to others, then simply start at home. Invest in the children you are raising, the job you are working, the spouse or partner you love. Sit at the dinner table with your teenager. Share your real-life, raw, transparent stories of success and failure and fear—the good and the bad. Feed inspiration to those around you in whatever capacity you have to offer—joy, hope, time, energy, transparency and presence. This is what we can do, my friends. Starting right now, this is how we can make change happen in this country and keep facilitating a positive momentum as we push toward the future.
Our new leader of the free world has now taken his seat in the oval office. Whether you identify as a liberal or a conservative, whether you are enthusiastic about this change or your heart is crushed, it has happened.
My dear liberal and conservative friends, please come home to yourself right now. Please know that you are so powerful, purposeful and capable of creating goodness, of healing hurt and tackling challenges in your community, in your country.
Share your stories. Share your authenticity. Be the face of greatness that this great country hungers for daily. But most importantly, be respectful. Be real. Be you.
In love and light always,
A true friend
Author: Kristin Mauer
Image: @elephantjournal; torbakhopper/Flickr
Editor: Emily Bartran
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