I've always considered myself to be a pretty lucky person. I mean, I was born into a financially stable, loving family as blue as the summer sky, in what used to be the richest country in the world. How many other people can say that they've been so lucky from their very first day on Earth?
A friend once told me I had "this attitude like everything is gonna be all right." To her, this was a result of my naivete, but to me it seems like a result of my realism. I have never been under any illusions about my own privilege; I appreciate it every day, owe every advantage I have to my privilege and luck and try always to place my own hardships in the context of the hardships of others. I hardly ever have a good reason to complain.
I write about this to give you an idea of the power of luck in my life, the energy that I can feel (most days) guiding me towards my "everything is gonna be all right." My philosophy of luck as it relates to balance. I don't know. So that maybe you can understand why I know that we are going to prevail tomorrow.
How I know, and a lil' somethin' you can do to improve our luck after the jump...
I was 15 years old when George W. Bush got elected in 2000. Old enough to know our country was headed for calamity, but young enough that I couldn't do anything about it.
In 2004, I spent weeks and weeks canvassing with everyone I knew to get him out of office. On election night I watched in horror as he somehow held onto the presidency. I wept for hours thinking of the words of all of the people whose doors I'd knocked on who wanted and needed Bush out of the White House. Of the mother who thanked us for canvassing because she wanted her son brought home from Iraq. My entire adult life has been lived under this oppressive, corrupt regime.
So I do feel like things come to some sort of balance. And it is our turn.
I don't think of myself as a superstitious person, but I was an English major and I have a good feel for portents and reality's story lines. Just as an example: I had every confidence that my Phillies would win the World series because the grizzled veterans (Phils) overcoming the young upstarts (Rays) for one last blaze of glory after 25 years just makes for a much better story than the other way around.
As if we didn't have enough basic facts and good sense on our side (like, say, everything our favorite statistical genius Nate Silver has to say), I've been seeing the portents, too. Liberty One, the most spectacular skyscraper in Philly, was lit all in blue last night. This morning I was early for work and as I was wandering around killing time I saw a blue jay for the first time since I was a kid. Things like that don't mean much, I guess, but they give me a surge of hope because they reinforce the feeling of luck, of heading in the right direction, that has been brewing inside me ever since the primaries.
Have you noticed the McSame campaign hasn't been able to get anything right this election? It's our turn.
Tomorrow I'll be driving around Bucks County, PA, ferrying volunteers who'll come down from New York City back and forth to their canvassing stations. I know my fellow Kossacks will be driving, knocking, calling, poll-watching, feeding volunteers, keeping voters in line and voting themselves. If you need advice on how to get involved, you know where to find it.
Yes We Can. Yes We Will.
And if you want to do something simple to improve our luck tomorrow, how about entreating the sun to bring us some good weather? One of my best friends in the world taught me this. We went to Temple University together, but she had to go back to her home in Takarazuka, Japan after graduation. Her name is Keiko, which means "Lucky Child" ; together we were a pretty unstoppable force! She taught how to make these charms called "Sunny Sunny Boys" (her quick translation of teru teru bozu), little tissue paper ghosts that you hang in the window to lure out the sun.
To make one:
- Roll one tissue into a tight ball.
- Drape a second tissue over the ball and tie it off with a piece of string or tape or a rubber band.
- Draw a face on Sunny Sunny Boy's new head.
- Hang Sunny Sunny Boy in a window or doorway, somewhere where the sun will see him tomorrow.
Sunny Sunny Boy never let us down! You GOTV and Sunny Sunny Boy will GOTS. And that always makes it easier to STFIL.