Dear H and Jellybean,
It’s voting day today.
H, you came along with me to vote. Jellybean you’re not here yet, you can come next time.
H, you asked what voting is, and I explained. For the next couple of hours, you claimed: “I win! I’m the leader!”
For the last few days, my Facebook feed has been filled with people talking about voting (Facebook is a social media platform that pretty much rules the world today, who knows if it will exist when you’re reading this). That’s cool everybody is talking about it today, but I wish my feed was filled with people who were that concerned about the society they live in, every day. And that instead of just being concerned about it and commenting on Social Media, they acted on it and did something. That’s the problem with voting: too many of us act like it’s all we can do. Too many of us behave like voting is the most important decision we can make for the wellbeing of our society or community. It’s not. The decision to do something is.
Don’t get me wrong, voting is important. Government plays a big part, there are wide-reaching policies that need to be created and put in place. But there’s so much we can all do, every day, that we instead abdicate to the government. There are 120 people in parliament who we look to for change. But there are nearly five million of us in the country that could be making that change or steps toward it, every day. We complain about them not fixing things that we could and should ALL be fixing. We talk about how little they’ve done for us, instead of holding ourselves accountable and asking what have WE done for ourselves, our country, our people, in that same three-year term. If the answer is nothing, even if we voted, who are we really complaining about?
Don’t rely on the government or the system around you to fix the problems you can already see. Do something about it instead.
Love you,
Dad.