Molding Consensus: Parenting and Voting with Compromise
Everyone told me having a child would change my life. I always reacted with a nod and a grin and some kind of “oh boy I know” reaction. But I couldn’t help but be a little annoyed with the warning. It kind’ve seemed like they were warning me about how horrible bankruptcy is or how bad hemorrhoids will get as you age. It seemed like ill-timed advice for someone who is already scared to death about something that is already happening to them and who is already anxious about how well they’re going to do at it.
My daughter is 18 weeks old now and I’m tired there’s no doubt. The doomsday veteran parents were right. It’s not easy. My wife and I used to go on dates when we wanted. I used to go to the gym when I wanted, to sleep when I wanted, to drink when I wanted, to write when I wanted. When my little nugget cries for a reason I can’t comprehend until 3am and then I wake up early and suck at an audition I do feel a little hemorrhoidal. At night when she finally falls asleep my wife and I look at each other and for the first time that day actually notice one another. I miss having the woman I love all to myself.
What those nay-saying parents failed to offer, however, was a little perspective. Becoming a parent isn’t the end of your life. It’s the end of your life without compromise. Compromised sleep, time, finances… My individual freedom has been compromised to the point where my sense of self has changed. My life is no longer my own. Part of me exists outside of my body in the form of a living, free-willed little hurricane of eating, sleeping and giggling. But if I look deeply at myself it is compromise that I truly want. The sleepless nights, the juggling of schedules, the rights and wrongs, the responsibility are all labors of love when you are truly not alone. Sometimes I think of my daughter and I as a great big Berontasauras. I’m at the controls in the head stepping heavily forward and she is kicking the levers in the tail, smiling as she throws our silly body back and forth.
We took our daughter to the polling place with us on November 8th. She was 8 weeks old. We wanted her to witness the election that would give us the first woman president. But like a great big blowout diaper of a surprise we were left staring at each other wondering “how did this happen?” I realized that day that government is a lot like parenting. It’s compromise. Martin Luther King Jr wrote, “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.” Dr King worked to introduce and subsequently pass the Civil Rights Act of 1957 alongside President Johnson. Johnson had voted against every piece of civil rights legislation before the Civil Rights Act in his previous 20 years as a legislator. The bill was far from perfect. In fact the first draft omitted the right for African Americans to vote. Yet, Dr King pressed on and through compromise molded Johnson, the Constitution and the consensus of the nation concerning race and civil rights.
Some of us on the left let our beliefs morph from passionate idealism into irrational dogma in this last election. When we were denied our ideal candidate some of us became blind fundamentalists instead of persuasive pragmatists. Some of us quit. Some of us voted for Harambe. Some of us voted against our beliefs out of spite. But most damningly some of us became naive. We couldn’t imagine the opposition being so large or that they truly believed what they said. How could they?
Compromise does not sacrifice ideals. It gives one another an opportunity to adopt those ideals as each other’s own. It’s the necessary action of a life that is not lived alone. We are a nation of many. But a single citizen that is disengaged is like an inattentive parent. And like a child we must nurture our nation to grow with the ideals we feel will make it succeed. So though we may not be in the head of this majestic beast, we must kick at the controls and make it’s tail sway towards the path we want it to go.
