For many years of my life I did not vote. I guess I was too angry, and 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 charade.
Later I understood that most of the people vote relativizing. That one can vote not very convinced, or choosing the least bad option, or being willing to be wrong, or being more clear about who we want not to win than who we want to win. You can also vote furious, shitting on the party of democracy. You can vote without fully agreeing with a program, and also being aware from the beginning that you will never fully comply. You can vote knowing that that vote will support a pact that you have not chosen, and that does not invalidate the right to be angry or happy later. You can vote, as several generations before me did, just because you can.
It was hard for me to change my mind. It is not in my nature to make decisions before being flooded with information, to be clear about what is “correct” and if it will help. If I haven’t bought a new computer keyboard for two years because understanding the particularities of mechanical mechanisms is very complex, how, then, are you asking me to vote?
And despite this, I ended up understanding that waiting for the game to be perfect to participate is perhaps not the best strategy, not only to exercise as a citizen, but also for many other things in life.
I understood that the dignity of staying on the sidelines is not such, and that it probably won’t matter to anyone, not even yourself in the future. Most of the decisions in life are made by discarding, or because it is generationally appropriate, or because a decision has not been made and the current has led us down that path. We are rarely offered a fork. We usually only make small adjustments in the direction we are going.
You don’t vote for your apartment, you choose the least bad among those that Idealista shows you. You don’t vote for your job, you choose between the options you have. You don’t vote for your family, you are born into it and then you expand or reduce it. But, paradoxically, voting can affect all of this, and a lot.
