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A Vignette About the Recent Election

 Whether you feel like the winner or the loser of the recent election, there is lots to think about and learn by asking the right questions.  As I get older I get lazier and am reluctant to step into tedious expository prose.  I prefer to look for vignettes or metaphors, each better than 'a thousand words.'

Cold, high winds were interrupting my usual 'backcountry babushka' duties at camp.  So I deigned to carry some dirty clothes to a laundromat I used to use.  Prices were 50% higher than expected.  I am glad I started hand-washing clothes a couple years ago, lest I have to put up with these high prices all the time.

Then I dug my heels in, picked up my basket of clothes, and simply walked out.  They didn't have many customers.  I had never done this before at a laundromat.  High prices can be fought to some extent by substitution.  Perhaps a lack of skills or imagination hold us down sometimes.  Perhaps we are slaves to habit.

But many times our surrender to higher prices comes from wanting to be a 'sensible' person, who has learned to go along in order to get along, with the external world.  A certain amount of that makes sense, otherwise you would wear yourself out fighting the world.

But there is a point when even a complacent and 'sensible' person says, "Stop.  I am not putting up with your bullshit anymore, and I don't care what you think of me."

Think about my tiny bit of defiance in light of the recent election.  



  


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