One of life's ways of getting your attention

Hanging above the sink in the bathroom of my first dojo was a list entitled Rules for Being Human.  Every time I washed my hands I read it as many times as it took to rinse away all the soap and grab a paper towel.  This list included many pearls of wisdom, some from the original and some my teacher added.  A few feel especially relevant today:

Life will give you lessons.  What you do with that wisdom is up to you.

If you don't learn the lesson early, they will get harder.

Pain is one of life's ways of getting your attention.​

I have seen countless social media posts today wondering how so many people could vote to keep the current white house occupant after witnessing all the damage he caused over the last four years.  I hear that pain and that frustration and that disbelief.  And it reminds me of the dojo rules for being human.  Pain is one of life's ways of getting our attention.

I hope the closeness of this election is exactly the pain we need to remember our work is not yet done.  Electing a new president will not solve all our problems because it will not suddenly remake our society into a place of equal opportunity to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all.  By electing a new president, we will not solve the problem.  We will only have solved one of the symptoms.

The dojo rules for being human concluded with two other considerations especially relevant today:

You will tend to forget all this.

You can remember any time you wish.

Let this be a good reminder.  Let us please learn the lesson to come together and solve voter suppression and tackle all the other things standing in the way of people having a voice in government. We will undoubtedly ​forget again, but we can remember any time we try.

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Information and Inspiration

• Tiny Buddah: 10 Rules for Being Human
• Forbes: Trump Falsely Tries To Claim Victory As Votes Still Are Being Counted
• Waging Nonviolence: 10 things you need to know to stop a coup
• FiveThirtyEight: 2020 Election: Live Results And Coverage
• ACLU: Fighting Voter Suppression
• BBC: US Election 2020: How the world is reacting to knife-edge vote​