I count myself firmly among the world’s cynics. I’m too pessmistic at times – have a tendancy to see the worst first, and find the rest later. It helps, I tell myself, when you travel in many of the ugliest parts of the world. Yesterday I was like that, tomorrow I likely will be as well. But today – November 4 – is election day in America, and today I’m neither cynic nor pessimist. Today I’m a voter. Because if you’re too cynical to see the promise in casting a vote for the leader of your country – and all that that entails – then you’ve lost something vital. I was standing in line today near my house, waiting to vote at a community center designated as my polling station. The leaves here are in full fall color – something many in the world do not experience, much to their loss. In line with me was every cross section of American – World War II veterans and first time voters, blacks and whites, those of means and those less well off. I saw a neighbor from across the street, and we talked about the dying oak tree he’s been cutting down in his yard. The girl in front of me just moved to this neighborhood – it’s her first time voting at this center – and she shared an umbrella in the drizzling rain with an elderly couple who’ve lived in their house for 53 years. They are neighbors now. They were joined by a friend, an elderly man in a baseball cap and a golf jacket. When they asked him if he’d ever stood in a line this long, he said, “Not since I got out of the Army in 1945.” People came from work – a nurse in a uniform that had teddy bears on it, and a man from the Mass Transit Authority, several mothers with babies, and a youthful looking black man with a young son who left the polling station, arms raised, telling the lenth of the line as he passed them that he had helped his father vote. When I got in to vote, I handed in my card, was directed to a small screen, and touched the boxes to cast my ballot, electronically. It took two minutes. Maybe three. But when I walked back out into the damp fall air, it felt absolutely wonderful.
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All Material © 2008 David Snyder
