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Election exhaustion? Love cancels the negativity
Originally appeared on spirituality.com.
Recently, I found myself in a battle with discouragement. I’d hoped to see honest and open campaigning in the months preceding local and national elections in the United States. But I noticed that even when candidates themselves stayed above the fray, negative comments, false accusations, and nasty rumors were on the rise in campaign ads. One pundit remarked on a national radio program that many rely on these tactics because reports show that few people bother to check facts. Rather, they rely on hearsay and vote accordingly. Especially if they hear a certain message over and over.
One morning, I felt particularly hopeless about the influence this negativity would have on voters in November. So I wrote a letter intending to send it to a newspaper. Certainly others felt the same concerns I did! Maybe people would begin to band together to demand more accurate information. I was hopeful until I realized that adding to the excess of opinions wasn’t necessarily going to help.
I needed to turn my energies in a different direction. As a student of Christian Science, I knew I could turn to God in humble prayer. I’d found that discovering solutions to any problem begins with getting rid of human will and correcting my own thinking, not from trying to convince others of my point of view. My family and I had experienced years of proof that solutions to unsettling situations come through spiritual healing, whether the complaint comes as physical symptoms, economic trouble, relationship issues or even political disagreements.
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