Extraordinary people living ordinary lives

I've written a number of times in this blog about my mother, Harriet.  Harriet was a dreamer of big dreams.  Not so much for herself (even though she always dreamed of winning the lottery, or a big jackpot at the casino), but for her children and grandchildren, nieces and nephews.

Harriet pictured movie stars and famous athletes, corporate presidents and US Senators and Congressmen.  Harriet never quite got comfortable that her and all of her extended family lived more or less ordinary lives.  She was always waiting for that breakthrough to recognized and celebrated greatness.

I've got quite a bit of Harriet in me, and my imaginary lives are where I celebrate the amazing things that could be.  The difference between me and Harriet is that while I love the richness of my imaginary lives, I don't really expect to experience any of those fantasies.

There is another thing that I believe deeply, and that is that many extraordinary people are living very ordinary lives.

It is not the notoriety you get, or the celebrity you enjoy, or the accolades rained down upon you that make a person extraordinary.

I believe each and every one of us is born with an extraordinary gift.  Some people spend the time to find and share their gift, and some don't.  But I believe we all have the capacity to be extraordinary.

Your gift may be something highly marketable, like a great aptitude for math, or science, or mechanics.  Your gift may be spoken art, or written art, or wearable art, or sung or played art.

Your gift may be the creation of food, the ability to put together beautiful outfits, or beautiful rooms.

Your gift may be thoughtful listening that makes the person speaking feel better just because of how intently you listen to them.

You may have the gift of being able to comfort any crying child.  Or the gift of using humor to diffuse tense situations.

Your gift may be that you are very physically strong, or have incredible stamina.

Your gift may be to see the good in just about everyone you meet.

Your gift may be an innocent, childlike sense of wonder that allows you to truly see and celebrate the beauty in the world.

There are so many different extraordinary gifts!  It matters not what your gift is, just that you take the time to find out what it is and to share that gift.

And never, ever downplay your particular extraordinary gift.  We were all given our gift for a purpose.  And it is in the coordination of our use of our gifts that extraordinary things happen.

Most of us are born into ordinary families and live ordinary lives.  This does not diminish the importance of the extraordinary people we are.

Take the time to discover and celebrate your extraordinary gift or gifts.  Think about how much good you have done and continue to do through the use of your extraordinary gift.

Strive to be your best self, because the world needs you the way you were made to be.

To thine own self be true

It seems that everyone has an opinion on everything, and a lot of people need to share those opinions on social media.

I've been noticing lately that no matter what happens, there are people complaining about it, and people celebrating it.

Every act by a person in the public eye is simultaneously a great act by a great person and a terrible act by a terrible person.

And what all this has convinced me is that the only person you should try to keep happy is yourself.

There is just too much difference of opinion in the world to try to please people.

I'm not in any way advocating a lack of order or decorum.  I'm not advocating breaking rules of society.  What I'm advocating is listening to your inner voice, and staying true to what you believe in, even if others ridicule or mock you for it.

A friend shared a story on Facebook the other day about going into a doughnut shop with her son, and having a table of men in their 60's and 70's point at her and make disparaging comments.  She took the opportunity to counsel her son to not grow up to be one of "those guys".

"Those guys" can be women too.  They are the people who for reasons known only to themselves feel that they have the right to not just sit in judgement of all of us, but to comment, gesture, and ridicule.

"Those guys" have hurt my feelings, made me angry, made me sad, and disillusioned me.  And then I decided "those guys" had no power over me, because I pity them.

With so much in the world to look at and learn about and celebrate, "those guys" instead prefer to concentrate on what they find lacking in others. What a dark and sad world "those guys"live in.

Taking the power away from "those guys" takes work, but it is well worth it.  Whoever you are, whatever you do, whatever you look like or dress like, whoever you hang out with, whatever kind of politics you embrace, own it.  Make your choices for you and be proud of the choices you make.

Think about who you are and who you want to be.  Choose the look that most closely aligns with how you want to look.  Be your unique and wonderful self.

"Those guys" will always be out there.  Missing on the tremendous beauty in the world because they are focused on what is wrong with everyone but themselves.

Focus instead on the incredible creation that is you.  Be truly who you are meant to be.  Celebrate the unique gifts you bring to the world.

And take the time to build others up.  Comment positively to the people you see and interact with.  Love your neighbor.  A simple "What a beautiful smile"  "Love your hair"  "Great nails"  "That dress is gorgeous"  "Love your laugh" "The shoes are awesome" can turn someone's day around.

Life is hard enough without making it harder.  Be true to yourself, and be kind to others.  If enough of us practice this discipline, "those guys" will fade in importance to the place they belong.

Which is when no one cares anymore about what "those guys" are criticizing.  And maybe then they will stop wanting to be "those guys" and learn to live appreciatively in this beautiful world of ours.

Do you really have time for that?

Once again I have become aware of how damaging careless words can be.  Life is hard.  There are problems that are unsolvable.  There are pressures to perform.  There are deadlines to be met.  Often, we feel pressured to respond quickly to a situation with a voice mail or email.

Let me offer a very important piece of advice.  If you don't have time to carefully craft your message so as to do no harm, to create no unintended consequences, you don't have time.  Let it wait.

I know this is counter to all the influences currently in society, where we "tweet" or "instagram" or "post" or "text" or email without thinking.  Where every day there is a story about a tweet or instagram or post or text gone viral for all the wrong reasons.

Do you really want to star in a story where you created hurt or chaos or disappointment or made someone feel less than simply because you didn't take the time to consider the impact your words could have?

We all speak carelessly at times, and that is damaging enough.  But when words take form on paper or on a computer screen or a smartphone, they gain power.  They gain import.  And the ability for those words to cause harm grows exponentially.

I still believe that most people are basically good, and do not want to inflict harm or pain on others.   I think that most of us, when we hurt someone, feel genuinely bad that we were careless with someone's feelings.  And so often, if we just stopped and thought, if we re-read, if we reworded, we could prevent the hurt and the pain.

When I am old (and I'm closer than I used to be so I kind of do this already), I won't remember every work crisis, or homework drama, or burnt meal, or forgotten errand.  Life has too much minutiae to remember all the details.  But unfortunately, I will remember the times I was rushed and carelessly hurt someone, and I will remember the times when others hurt me.

I'll remember plenty of good times, don't get me wrong.  But it is hard to forget pain.  There are neurologists and psychologists and physiologists that theorize remembering pain and painful experiences is necessary for survival, and that makes perfect sense.  The theorize that painful memories are stored in multiple places in the brain, so that they are remarkably easy to retrieve.

The good memories take more work to retrieve, they are not so conveniently stored in so many places.  Why make more painful memories, when all it may take to prevent them is a little time and consideration?

When you write, it can help to read what you have written aloud, allowing the words to take form as sound can clarify what they may sound like to the person reading them.

Think about the reader.  What emotions are they bringing to what you are writing?  Will you reinforce negative emotions with your word choices, or soothe and comfort?

Words matter.  Feelings matter.  People matter.

For most of us, the work that we do is fleeting.  It feels important in the moment.  But unless you are a doctor, or a fireman, or a police officer, or an emergency responder, or a judge, you rarely are holding a life in your hands.  (And I am totally not talking about artists, whose work is immortal, but who are usually careful and deliberate in their art.)

You are most likely part of a team who checks and balances each other, you can have moments of significant contribution, your work is important at this time, but it will fade away as things change and the world and the workplace evolve.

What will not fade away is the impact you make on others.  What is never fleeting is the good you do, the joy you bring, the way you build others up and help them see their value.

Please use your words carefully so that the impact you leave is positive and uplifting.  Because I believe it matters to you that you leave the world better than you found it.  And if you use your life and your words carefully and with deliberation, you will make the world a better place.

Seeking simple answers in a complex world

Many years ago, as my husband and I were about to begin our daily run, our young neighbor offered my husband some advice.  "I know how to win every race," he excitedly told my husband.  "Just start first and stay there."

Truly great advice to win every race.  A lot harder to implement than it is to say.

And I find that what I hear when people talk about complex problems is answers with the same level of maturity and reality as the advice my young neighbor gave my husband.

It has me wondering how we have evolved to so many people believing that there are simple answers to complex problems.

And the people in the public eye that challenge us to think about the complexity of the problems that confront us, and ask us to listen to a well thought out long term plan, are blasted as intellectual elitists who don't understand the common man.

Sound bites can't solve poverty.  Emotional speeches won't solve the problem of violence in society.  Climate change won't stop impacting every day people because some don't believe it is real.

Part of the challenge is that to solve a problem that has never been solved, you have to try a solution that has never been tried.

And new ideas and new solutions are always met with skepticism.

Add to the skepticism that typically a change in direction means that someone who has garnered the ability to make lots and lots of money will need to change direction as well to keep their income stream secure, and you have a massive misinformation campaign about why new ideas won't work.

And then the back and forth arguing begins, and the media focuses on the emotions and not the facts, and pretty soon the level of debate has sunk to "You're ugly and your feet smell'.  And nothing positive gets done.

How in the world can we break this cycle of inaction?  It starts with each of us refusing the simple answer.  It starts with each of us demanding civil discourse, and solutions supported by data.

It starts with accepting that every hypothesis can be proven, and every hypothesis can be disproven.  The larger data set is the data set that deserves more analysis.  And as the data supporting a position grows, your acceptance of the position as valid should grow.

The other critical factor is that complex problems don't have "silver bullet" solutions.  A solution set is necessary to solve a complex problem, and the timelines for successful solutions are often multi-generational.  Problems we think we have solved crop up again when we stop working on them, but we have also made tremendous gains and have had great success where data based problem solving has been used.

Think about the medical field if you are skeptical.  Disease management, disease eradication, organ transplants, growing bones and skin in a laboratory; the list is long and impressive.

I believe we can solve social and economic issues as well if we are disciplined and rational enough to take a scientific approach.

But to do that we have to go back to teaching scientific method and analysis to our children instead of teaching them test taking skills.

We have to start somewhere.  One planet, one people, one lifetime to get it right.  And if we start now with trying to really solve some of our biggest problems instead of trying to score points off of each other and self-proclaim ourselves the winners, just think of the amazing progress we can make.

A distorted lens

One of the most important things to remember in life is that we are all viewing the world through a distorted lens.

We see what we see through many distortions in our lens.  The lens starts to become uniquely our own very early in life.  The first distortions come at birth.  What circumstances are we born in?  Are we very poor?  Are we very rich? Are we born or adopted into a nurturing family, or are we born to those unprepared and unskilled at parenthood? Does our skin color match the predominant skin color on the continent we are born on?  Are we born or adopted into a family that adheres to a faith tradition? By the time we have learned to roll over and sit up, our lens is already distorted.

And the distortion continues.  Do we go to school with other children, or are we schooled at home?  Are we large for our age or small?  Are we athletic and coordinated?  Are we very verbal?  Are we introverted or extroverted?  Do we go to bed hungry or cold?  Are we the child who has everything, or the child who never has the school supplies they need?

Do we have a physical characteristic that makes us different?  Do we have glasses or braces or a wheelchair or a walker?  Do we wear hearing aids or have a service animal?

Each day of our life adds an experience that changes and distorts the lens that we see the world through.

And that is in an ordinary life.

There are other things that distort our lens that are far from ordinary.  Do we suffer from a natural disaster, like a hurricane, flood, wildfire or earthquake as a child, or as an adult?  Do we lose someone we love in a natural disaster?  Do we lose someone we love in an accident?  Do we lose someone we love in a violent crime?  Do we lose someone we love to suicide?  Do we lose someone we love to disease or illness?

With all the diverse experiences that distort our lens, we all see things differently.  Not the right way or the wrong way, just a different way.

Once we embrace the reality that we all see things differently, we can start to let go of believing that we all share one reality.  Once we embrace that we are all living in a different reality, we can start to let go of believing that we know best.

It is really hard to argue with someone about what they believe if you believe that each of us lives in our own unique reality, shaped by all the life experiences we have had up to that point in time.

Accepting that everyone sees things differently means that you learn to explain what you believe, and allow others to explain what they believe.

You don't have to see things the way other people see them.  It is perfectly acceptable to ask questions about how someone got to the belief system they embrace.  But it isn't okay to tell them they are wrong, or stupid, or misinformed.  It is perfectly acceptable to offer suggestions for good reading material on any subject, but not to suggest that reading the material will somehow "fix" the other person.

The best way to share your worldview, the view from your distorted lens, is to be asked by someone to share it.  If you never show interest in what others see and believe, they have no reason to be interested in what you see and believe.

The best way to find common ground to build on is to understand where another person's view came from, what life experiences shaped the lens through which they view the world.

It is true that I will never fully understand how you see things, because the life that shaped you is different from the life that shaped me.

But I can understand the experiences that shaped how you see things.  I can listen to your stories, I can understand what hurt you and what helped you, what made you strong, and what brought you to your knees.

And when I invest in what made you who you are, I can find the value in our differences, and the value in our shared humanity.

When it seems like all the differences do is lead to argument and anger and hate, remember that you have the power to ask about differences in a non-threatening way.  And when you seek to understand, you can understand.

You may never embrace the anger and hatred, I know I hope I never will.  But if I try with an open heart to understand what happened to that person in their life experience to make them feel that anger and hatred are good choices, maybe I can point them to a path where anger and hatred aren't necessary.

And maybe I can't.  But if I don't open my heart to them, I'll never even have the chance.  And I want to have that chance.  Because I want to live in a world where anger and hatred are choices made in the past, and not in the present.  And if I don't actively work on that world everyday, I know that there is no way for it to exist.

Bridges

I've been trying to write my novel every day, but it has honestly been drudgery.  I was stuck looking for a bridge.

I'm not a trained author, so I don't know if that is the right term or not, but I'll explain what I mean here.

The novel I'm currently working on is what I would call a "relationship novel"; it explores the themes of relationships between people.  The central character does enter a love relationship in the novel, but the novel also explores her relationships with her parents, stepfather, and stepbrother and sister.  The novel also digs deeper into other central families in the series and their relationships with each other.

It is no secret that I believe that relationships are a central component of a happy life.  My world view holds that connection is essential to human beings, and that our relationships create our connections and build the platform from which we can have a fulfilling life.

Back to the problem I was having.  The current novel has many characters and story lines, and they all have to come together to create a novel.  The term I use for how I bring my stories together into a book is bridges.  As a bridge connects one section of land to another, my story bridges connect one section of my story to another.

I was missing a critical bridge to bring my stories together, and this week I found a character that will provide the bridge.

Since figuring out that connection, I am having a great time writing.  I can see how my story will evolve naturally to the conclusion.  I'm having lots of fun again.

And this naturally flowing creativity is spilling over into everything.  I have more energy.  I feel happier.  I feel more positive.

And it got me to thinking how often missing a bridge cripples me in other areas of my life.

There is no feeling for me that is worse than feeling separated from the people I love.  And I don't mean physically separated, I mean emotionally separated.

In the early stages of grief, for me, the worst feeling is the separation.  The inability to find the bridge to the being I have lost.  As time goes on, I have always found a bridge back to the being I miss.  Dreams, memories, shared memories and conversations, pictures, they all help me build a bridge to who I miss.

The time table for building the bridge is variable.  With my Dad, it took more than a year.  With my Mom in her state of dementia, I just keep missing her; as hard as I try to find a bridge, I can't find one yet.

But as long as there is a bridge missing, life, and my joy in life is compromised.

Sometimes harsh words and disagreements create a gap that needs to be bridged between me and those I love that are still here.  And those bridges can be as hard to find as the bridges to those we have lost from this plane of existence.

With the living, forgiveness is the first step in building a bridge, and forgiveness can be very hard to find.  I wrote something last night that I think is true.  Forgiveness is a balm for the wound of the wounded, it does little for the person who created the wound.  I truly believe that.  If you have hurt someone, their forgiveness or lack of forgiveness is less important than why you chose to hurt them in the first place.  If it was a lack of thought, if you don't commit to think more carefully about what hurts others, forgiveness won't help you.  If it was deliberate, if you don't commit to not do that hurtful thing again, forgiveness won't help you.

To build bridges in our relationships that will stand the test of time takes work from both sides of the divide.  When we choose words or behaviors that separate us from those we love, it is not enough to seek forgiveness.  We must seek to understand what motivated us to choose those words and behaviors, and commit to changing ourselves.

My stories are a reflection of me and what I think is important, and you will find in my stories people who value the relationships that they have, even when they make mistakes that cause rifts that have to be bridged.

Again, I'm hoping that seeing reconciliation in fiction will inspire people to seek reconciliation in their own lives.

Because I believe when we have bridged all the separations from our loved ones, we can experience real joy.

Lying to My Fitness Pal

I'm back on the wagon again.  I got tired of logging all my food, and decided I could maintain my weight without using a food diary.

I was wrong.  After watching my weight creep up for the past few weeks, I bit the bullet and started logging my food and exercise in MyFitnessPal again yesterday.

One of the reasons I had stopped in the first place is really embarrassing.  I had started lying to My Fitness Pal.

How crazy is that?  When I reached the end of my daily calories, I just stopped logging them.  Kept eating, stopped acknowledging I was eating.    So it was easier to stop logging altogether than to admit I was overeating.

Now I know I have shared with all of you before my struggles to accept myself.  I try to eat a healthy diet, and exercise.  But I love sweets.  And I love starches.  And I love beer.  And I love wine.

Those loves of mine get me into trouble.

I end up in this back and forth debate with myself about what is really important.  Is it important to be happy, or to be disciplined, or somewhere in between.

Everything came to a head for me this weekend.  My clothes are starting to get tight, and I'm too cheap to go buy new clothes.  So I will lose the weight I need to so that my clothes are comfortable again.

I promised myself after I lost 50 pounds four years ago that I would never buy bigger clothes and allow myself to add that 50 pounds back.

I had lost 35 pounds in 2002, and gained back 40.  Then I lost 30 pounds in 2006, and gained back 45.  Then I lost the 50 pounds in 2012 and 2013, and I have mostly kept it off.  I've got about 10 pounds back, and I will lose that.

I'll probably gain and lose 10 pounds on a regular basis for the rest of my life.  I think most people do.  It is finding the outer limit that is the problem for me, and not buying new clothes in a larger size is an effective control feature for me.

Last night, when I would have gone for some chips or cheese and crackers, I had a cup of herbal tea.  I wasn't really hungry, just wanted to taste something.

After a few weeks of this I hope my good habits have regained dominance over my bad habits.  I have a vacation planned in October, and I want to be close enough to goal weight so that my clothes fit comfortably, and I can be a little less disciplined on vacation.

I feel good about the decision to lose weight this time, because I have started to feel bad from the lack of discipline in my choices.  I wish I could figure out why I have to get to the point of feeling bad before I can get myself back on track.

Wish me luck!  No lying to My Fitness Pal.  No more "Just this one cookie won't hurt".  I'm ready to feel good about my choices again.

Blog Stats

One of the cool things about using blogger is that you can look at your statistics.  One of the statistics that surprised me is the distribution of countries that my blog readers come from.

While the dominant number of readers are from the United States, Russia is actually second, followed by Germany, France and the United Kingdom.

Most of the traffic comes in from Google or LinkedIn.

The most views any one post got was the post Having a Jesus Moment, which got 45 views.  Everyone's best doesn't look the same and the Legacy of being picked last are tied for second with 39 views.  Third place goes to Control, with 36 views.

No 2016 posts are in the top ten for page views.  I only have 1 follower, who I truly appreciate.

I'm intrigued by the idea of people in so many different countries reading my blog.  If you are reading this, and are not in the United States, I would greatly appreciate if you would comment with your location.  I know I lot of my thinking is influenced by the fact that I have always lived in the United States, and I appreciate that people outside the country are still interested in what I have to say.

I started writing this blog because I wanted to continue to make a contribution, even though I no longer work in corporate America.  I pictured myself adding inspiration and comfort to the world with my words.

Sometimes, I think I am accomplishing that goal, sometimes I think I am falling woefully short of that goal.  But I keep plugging away, looking for inspiration, trying to make it better for someone somewhere who is touched by my words and feels less alone.

I have learned that words are more difficult to write than to speak.  I have also learned that I am as uncomfortable taking a strong position that might cause discord in writing as I am in conversation.

I also learned that sometimes what I feel needs to be said has to come out in my blog.

I learned that it is easy to get your feelings hurt.  One comment fairly early on was this "It has finally occured to me what disturbs me about this blog. Instead of musing in ones head the voice ends up telling people what they ought to do."   I wanted to respond in many different ways, and then responded with humor.  And I realized my muse is bossy.

I want a better world.  I'm writing fictional novels where it is a better world.  I try to inspire or provoke people to think differently with my blog, with the hope of there being more kindness, more tolerance in the world.  And I have realized that results in my telling people what to do sometimes, and asking them to try to behave differently other times. And people can perceive that as preachy or as bossy.  I have learned to live with that.

Sometimes the lack of comments on my blog bothers me, but then again, I see that the posts are getting read, so if no one has anything to say that is fine

I worry sometimes that I may have offended someone with a blog post, but I accept that no one has to read past the first sentence if the post is going somewhere they don't want to follow.

As with everything, I'm learning.  Learning about me, learning about the blogosphere, learning about the people who read my posts.

And so I'll keep posting.  If you have topics you would like me to cover, let me know.  In the meantime, I'll keep watching my stats, and thinking about all of you who give me a little bit of your time by reading my thoughts.

Crushing on the President

After my Donald Trump rant the other day, I'm probably going to alienate even more people when I admit that for the last few weeks (OK, really for about 12 years) I've been crushing on the President.

And he just keeps making it better.

In 2004, when he spoke at the Democratic National Convention, I was inspired and intrigued by the Senator from Illinois.  So intrigued, in fact, that I eventually purchased his book, "The Audacity of Hope" in March of 2007.  I wanted to know more about this guy.

The book was a turning point for me.  I really identified with Barack Obama's world view.  His relentless optimism, his belief in the inherent goodness of people, resonated with me.  The crush began.

As he campaigned in 2008, and I got to see Michelle Obama, and the Obama girls, and Marian Robinson (Michelle's mom) I started crushing on the entire family.

When he made his speech the night of the 2008 election, and told the girls that they could finally have a dog, he was every dad.  Even as he was making history as the first African-American president.

The Press Corps dinners during his eight years in office have been a real treat.  He has awesome comedic timing, and is as comfortable making fun of himself as poking fun at the rest of the Washington elite.

Michelle Obama is my idea of an ideal woman.  She is beautiful, healthy, accomplished and fun.  I feel like we would have been great friends if I had lived near her or gone to school with her.  She is so real and approachable, and very very strong, physically, emotionally and socially.

I don't always agree with the President, I think the Trans Pacific Partnership as currently written is a bad idea.  I'm glad the Affordable Care Act got passed, but I think he spent too much political capital to get it done, and that it has hamstrung his efforts to more the country forward in other ways.

But that is the beauty of a crush.  Crushes don't care about important stuff.  Crushes are about liking smiles, and style and wit.  Crushes are the safe place we can keep from our childhood, where there is no reality or expectation of a relationship, there is just that bubbly happy feeling when we are watching the object of our crush do the things we crush on them for.

So with the Obama Administration coming to an end, there are more and more retrospectives on Barack Obama.   And when I look at the photos, or the video clips, of him with children, or playing with his dogs, or dancing with Michelle, or hanging out with his family, my crush is reinforced.

I will miss him.  I can't imagine another President in my lifetime who will inspire me to crush like this.  The last Presidential crush I had was JFK, and I was only three years old when he died.

I accept that my crush allows me to overlook things that I might otherwise be critical of.  And I do criticize.  But the affection, the respect, the admiration are untarnished by disappointment.

I think the reason why I've maintained my crush for so long is I perceive Barack Obama to be a genuinely caring person.  A person who cares about people, who cares about right and wrong, who cares about America.   Another reason has been his astounding ability to rise above all the stuff that has been thrown at him.

Questions about his birthplace, heckling from the floor of Congress during a State of the Union address, insult after insult about his competence, his education, his character, his religious beliefs; and through it all he has stayed the adult in the room, trying to steer the conversation back to reasonable adult discourse.

Truly crush-worthy in my estimation.  I hope whatever happens in November, he and Michelle do not disappear from the public eye.   I think I'd like to continue crushing on them for a long time.

When you have to speak your piece

I've been attempting to work on my novel today, but I'm having a hard time finding the words.  I think part of the problem is that I have something I have to say, and I don't really want to have to say it.

Years ago, there was an episode of the situation comedy Cheers that included a scene I have never forgotten.  Sam and Diane were arguing, and each had grabbed the other's nose.  They were in a lock, dragging each other toward the ground.  At one point Diane said, "Sam, we have sunk as low as two human beings can possibly sink".  Oh, how I wish that were so.

It seems we Americans are seeing just how low we can set the bar; trying to find how low we can possibly sink.

Partisan politics has always been ugly.  But I never thought I would see the day when a major party candidate for President of the United States would be a narcissistic, bigoted, ignorant bully who insults anyone who dares to question him.  Even to the point of insulting the parents of a Purple Heart and Bronze Star recipient who died in combat.

And his supporters are standing solidly behind him, defending indefensible behavior and actions.  How has it come to this?  Where is our collective conscience?  Where has our moral compass gone?

I've never registered with a party affiliation, I have always registered to vote as an Independent.  I have voted across party lines since I was eighteen.  I try to study the platforms of the candidates, and try to ignore their personalities as much as I can, because I realize that what we see is a media creation, not a person.

I believe that you can't possibly "know" a candidate, except at a very local level, so I always felt my vote should go to the candidate whose platform most closely aligned with what I believe in.

But this election is different for me.  While I still believe I can't possibly "know" either candidate, the actions and behavior of one of the candidates is absolutely reprehensible.

I feel very isolated.  I see many people I know defending his actions and behavior on Facebook and other social media.  I want to ask "How can you?"

I want to ask them if they would think it was OK if I mocked their grief, if I did an offensive imitation of a differently abled person that they love.

I want to ask them how much they have studied the Constitution, and Foreign Policy.  This isn't reality TV, it is reality.

And while most Presidential candidates have no idea what it is like to live in the real world that most Americans inhabit, Donald Trump is off the charts in terms of his relationship with our reality.

He has used anger, and fear, and Hillary Clinton hatred to make his advances.  His only ideas for America are to build walls, register religious groups, impose trade tariffs and sanctions, restore torture, and kill families of people connected to terrorist activities.

As the descendent of immigrants, as a believer in God, as a believer in the values upheld in the Constitution of the United States, I am appalled by his ideology.  And his language.  And his behavior.

I realize that some reading this may vehemently disagree with me.  That is where the feeling of isolation comes from.

Because I can't find common ground on this.  I can agree that I wish that there were better candidates representing both parties.  I can agree that the two party system is broken.  I can agree that we have reached a very dark day in American politics.

But I can't understand how any rational, thinking person who values other people can condone Donald Trump and his total lack of empathy and decency.

And it scares me that so many people not only condone his behavior, but celebrate it.

This isn't about who you like or don't like.  It isn't even about the platforms anymore.  It is about who we as Americans.  Are we a bright beacon of liberty in a dark world?  Or have we become a frightened cowering bully who adds to the darkness?

There is no need to make America great again.  We are what we have always been.  A big melting pot, where some wonderful and some terrible things are true.  We have problems to solve.  But we have always done our best problem solving when we work together, not blame each other.

My hope is that this election year has taught us just how easily we slide from rancorous political discourse into true dangerous dialogue and ideology.  I hope that this election cycle teaches us to compromise more and stonewall less.

Because that is what has and always will make America great.  Our ability and desire to work together for the common good.