For many years of my life I did not vote. I guess I was too angry, and I would rather not play than follow imperfect rules. The world is a mess, I thought, but at least I won’t be contributing to the farce.
Then I understood that most people vote relativistically. That one can vote not very convinced, or choosing the least bad option, or being willing to make a mistake, or being more clear about who we want not to win than who we want to win. You can also vote furiously, shitting yourself at the party of democracy. You can vote without fully agreeing with a program, and also being aware from the start that it will never be fully implemented. You can vote knowing that that vote will support a pact you didn’t choose, and that doesn’t invalidate the right to be angry or happy about it later. You can vote, as several generations before mine did, just because you can.
It took me a while to change my mind. It is not in my nature to make decisions before I am flooded with information, to be clear about what is the “correct” one and whether it will be of any use. If I haven’t bought a new computer keyboard in two years because understanding the ins and outs of mechanical mechanisms is very complex, then how can you be asking me to vote?
And yet, I came to understand that waiting for the game to be perfect in order to participate may not be the best strategy, not only for exercising as a citizen, but for so many other things in life.
I realized that the dignity of standing on the sidelines is not such dignity, and that probably no one will care about that, not even yourself in the future. Most of life’s decisions are made out of hand, or because it is generationally appropriate, or because a decision has not been made and the current has taken us down that path. Rarely are we offered a fork. We generally only make small adjustments in the direction we are headed.
You don’t vote for your flat, you choose the least bad one from those shown by Idealista. You don’t vote for the job, you choose from the options you have. You don’t vote for the family, you are born into it and then expand or reduce it. But paradoxically, voting can affect all of this, and a lot.
