When I was in Tennessee last fall, I was generously hosted by an older fella who proudly showed me around his state, his cattle and his business. He was gregarious and warm and lively. He also wore a brightly coloured, large lettered Trump shirt and did not shy away from talking politics with this nose-ringed, organically-minded, east coast Canadian. I love a political discussion so we got along quite well and one thing he said has really stuck with me.
“There was a phrase I heard that said, ‘If you’re under 40 and you vote Republican, you have no heart. If you’re over 40 and vote Democrat, you have no brain.”
As someone just barely tipped over that maybe arbitrary precipice, I’ve been considering what it means for me. For those lifelong card-carrying partisan party die-hards, the idea that affiliation is so loose as to be influenced by something as passing as age, this concept may be borderline offensive, but I’d suggest that for a large portion of the population, some version of this may be true. It’s true for me, in that I have grown more fiscally conservative as I age and I do look more critically at some of the social programs that I would have previously vocally defended.
But given todays global political climate, I think this quirky phrase bears a reconsideration. How to decide when brain or heart should lead is a question we could ask ourselves about any decisions, but especially pertinent now as things feel more unstable and unknown than ever.
But maybe choosing between the two isn’t the item of importance here. Maybe the real story is acknowledging that both are important and that having a multitude of voices is what makes up a democracy. Maybe the real moral of the quirky phrase is that surely we can recognize within ourselves that there is value in all perspectives and villainizing one side or the other will only come back to bite us, as individuals and as part of a larger community.
I know we’re being pushed into corners that want us to choose, corners that say “this is the heart-leading corner. Get in here with the rest of the people who care and have compassion and empathy.” Or, alternatively, “come to the corner of brain-leading. We make the best decisions and in the end, all of this clever strategy will pay and we’ll all be better off.”
And between the corners is a space where lots of people would like to go, but it’s impossible to rest there with all the screaming and yelling from the corners on both sides. “You can’t have it both ways!!! Take a side! Take a stand!”
And as long as we’re all yelling at each other, neither side ends up “winning” and instead global powers slowly grab more power from the powerless and billionaires find ways to grab more money.
Instead of dividing yourself into a group that is wholly voting against something rather than for anything, try finding a middle ground with your neighbour on the “other side”. Listen with a curious heart and a vulnerable brain and remember that above all else, we’re all just humans who want love, security and good health. And if it feels like the chasm is too wide and deep between how we get there, consider that the other side feels exactly the same. They feel similarly threatened, unsafe, distrusting and anxious. Surely no political opinion is worth breaking relationships over when in the end, it comes down living in the same community, the same family, the same workplace and being there through both real hard times and true joy, together. Don't burn a bridge over a man in a suit when in the end, it will come down to a friend on a porch.