33 BILLION HOURS

THIS IS NOT A POST ABOUT THE ELECTION OR THE CANDIDATES!! Just sayin . . .

Election year . . . yikes. But really every year is some kind of election year. But when we roll into the Presidential election cycle things just get completely wonky. Politics are dirty and have always been dirty. It’s just that now we have social media and 24 hour news to spread the joy in a non-stop, non fact based, pay attention to ME, kind of way.

So what is the truth about all this?

We The People are the truth. We the people are the government. The government isn’t Senators and Congressmen or the President. The government is US. We fund it, we elect it, and then we have to deal with it. Whatever ‘it’ means. And maybe, just maybe we have been going about this all wrong.

My nephew Ian and his wife Meagan are part of this group called ‘One Tribe’. What One Tribe does is collect things throughout the week: clothes, food, personal care items, hygiene items, books, shoes, etc. And then they pile it all into a cars and a group of them head to downtown Seattle on Sundays to pass out all this wealth to the homeless, the runaways, the addicts, the people. And they give something even more valuable, they give their time. They don’t just dump stuff off and run, they hang around, they visit, they talk about how things are going, they ask questions, they share information and they care! They learn the names of the people they are helping, and they let them know they matter.
They even did this on Super Bowl Sunday. Yes, while you and me and a billion other people were in front of our TV’s shoving nachos into our faces, screaming at referees, and arguing about which 5 million dollar a minute commercial was the best, Ian and Meagan and One Tribe were out on the streets doing some ‘By The People’ stuff.  Because that is what real governing looks like: Of the People, For the People, By the People.

Here are some photos of them spending time with fellow people:

We keep sending folks and money to WA DC and we keep getting less and less back. But we have HUGE expectations that WA DC fix our problems. After all, that is what they get paid for, what they were elected for, what they take our taxes for, etc. But that doesn’t seem to be working too well. What does work well is when WE THE PEOPLE do stuff FOR THE PEOPLE. That’s us doing stuff for us. We have to quit waiting and bitching and complaining about our problems and we have to start working and giving and contributing to solve them.

So what pisses you off about the problems in your country the most? Is it the number of homeless people? Or is it the number of addicts? Is it the lack of decent education? Is it the lack of care for our elderly, our Veterans, our disabled? Is it the polluted waterways? Is it the lack of nutrition for kids and families? What is it? What is it that pisses you off so much that you feel the need to post on Facebook about how horrible that problem has become? And what exactly are YOU the people doing about it? Because YOU the individual ARE YOU THE PEOPLE.  Who should fix what pisses you off? Who are are waiting for?

Living back in a small town again is a great reminder that it is the people that take care of the people. Government assistance is lovely and often needed but it is not and never will be enough. Even when a person is given government money to help with housing, to help with food, etc, it will not be enough. And we cannot just walk by those who receive assistance and assume it is enough, that we have done enough because our taxes paid for that assistance. We can’t just write a check for our taxes or have the government write a check or want to create a government that gets to write bigger and more numerous checks and expect to feel good about ourselves. It’s passing the buck in every sense of the word.

Just imagine if more people joined One Tribe or started a One Tribe in their own city.  And why aren’t you?
Just imagine if more people committed 4 hours of their Facebook time to a Food Bank instead.
Just imagine if more people reached out to the YWCA (not the YMCA) and volunteered to help with housing women and children. What if more people used their mad resume skills or Microsoft Office skills to teach a class for them?
Just image if more people volunteered at the VA Hospital. What if more people drove a Veteran to an appointment or brought them something they needed like books or even better just gave them some one on one time?
Just imagine if more people joined a Stream Team to help clean up an inner-city waterway and make it habitable for little aquatic creatures.
Just imagine if more people joined a Hospice Care program and helped another human being make the biggest transition at the end of their life to the life beyond.

Just imagine if more people gave 4 hours a week volunteering in some way in their community.

There are about 319 MILLION people in this country and if only HALF of them volunteered that would be 159 million people giving time. And if that 159 million people gave 4 hours a week that would be 636 MILLION hours of giving PER WEEK!! That means over 33 BILLION HOURS  per year. Imagine what WE THE PEOPLE, OF THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, could accomplish in those hours. 33 billion hours of giving, doing something positive, making a difference, changing things, making things better for someone and not waiting for someone else to do that. Someone like the government.

I don’t ever want to be anywhere outside of the FOR THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE place. It’s a lonely place full of unhappiness and it’s full of people waiting for someone else to make things better. It’s full of whiners and complainers. It’s full of people who say they don’t have the time to give.

I like the place where I look up and see my fellow PEOPLE looking out for each other, taking care of our own stuff and also helping those in true need. I love seeing the difference real governing can make. When we govern ourselves and then help in the governing of those that need help we are proving that government works like it is supposed to work. And real governing is done by the real governors: We The People.