We all need someone who hears us

I’m writing this on Friday, October 25. We are less than two weeks before Election Day. A large minority of voters have already voted. The ads are relentless, especially in swing states, like here in Pennsylvania. It feels like there is no escape. Many people have expressed exhaustion. Many more feel a deep sense of fear and anxiety that are just reinforced every time they turn a screen on — whether it be the news, social media, or even entertainment or sports interrupted non-stop by political advertising designed to invoke fear within the viewer. This election is causing a whole array of dis-health, if that’s even a word.

And so many feel like they have no one to talk to, no one to listen to what they are feeling or going through. Too many are fooling themselves into believing that they just need to get to Nov. 6 so that it will be over. But I think people know that Election Day isn’t the end and that all of it goes away. Our electoral system isn’t designed that way.

In many ways we are a nation who never deals with these things — the dis-health that our society faces. Or rather the multitude of unhealthy things that we have never dealt with. Instead we are too busy piling on additional unhealthy unresolved issues. Maybe we have just finally reached a point that we can’t reach the top to throw yet another unresolved unhealthy thing on top of the pile. There has to be a better way, rather than ignoring unresolved issues that cause dis-health.