Let’s be the Badass Mavericks that We Are.

I was mid-bite on my lunch break when the video ad began playing.

Suddenly I wasn’t eating anymore. I was holding a plate of quickly cooling pasta as I watched the ad on my screen. I’d watched enough to be able to skip ahead to what I was waiting for, but I didn’t.

I kept watching instead.

We all know the importance of voting. Especially in today’s political landscape, it’s one sure way to know that you didn’t just sit on your hands and watch the circus. It’s proof that you, if you could, acted upon your rights as a citizen and that you spoke up. You didn’t stay quiet.

Elections should bring with them a sense of pride and of harmony because it is one of the only times everyone in the country is uniting together to do the same thing at the same time. It’s only when we stand together that our voices can be heard.

But politics are rarely harmonious. They’re a lot of things, but harmony isn’t something often associated with them.

Which is perhaps why this video made me stop eating, pasta of all things.

It stirred in me an appreciation of the non-partisan call to action to vote. Nothing more, nothing less. It didn’t try to get me to think one way or the other. It didn’t push another candidate in front of me to judge. It asks us to pick up our humanity, our citizenry, and our own truth.

I’ve never wanted to be a maverick before.

In fact, I’ve never looked up the word. Have you? Maverick is a noun that can be defined as “an unorthodox or independent-minded person.”

Put like that, I think I am a maverick. I think I’ve been one all along and I can think of dozens of people I know who are one as well.

Let’s be the badass mavericks that we are.

Let’s vote.

~

Image: Pietra Schwarzler/Unsplash

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