Last night I watched an interesting movie, called Swing Vote with Kevin Costner.
What I enjoyed about the movie was the way in which it reduced the social realities we live in to the individual.
It took the world of Politics and it showed us how the various aspects of that world are run by people who get swayed by their own selfish desires and obsessions.
I found the movie boldly looked at the world we live in and its craziness.
It centered in the main character who was a drunk and refused to take any kind of responsibility. This character named Bud, loved his beer and would have nothing to do with his civil and personal responsibilities. His young daughter took care of him and covered up for him and kept on believing that her father cared despite the constant evidence that he did not.
The scenario of the movie was not something that could happen in real life. However, it was well constructed to make the point the movie intended to make. The plot all boiled down to the character Bud having the ‘swing vote’ in a Presidential election campaign. The movie displayed societies tendencies through the presidential candidates and their campaign managers and the reporters and so on.
I guess you’ll have to see the movie to get more of the details.
For my purposes here I’ll focus on the last scene of the movie where Bud and the presidential candidates come out of their selfish pursuits and ‘come to their senses’, as it were.
Focusing on the main character, Bud, we see him put away the booze and begin to awaken to his ‘responsibilities’. He comes out of his drunken stupor.
The movie showed how the collective reality can distract us away from the awareness we need to see the responsibility of the individual in the whole process. Bud and the Presidential candidates are shown to each come to their senses and to own each their part. I found it enlightening to see how the whole of society is really reflected in the ‘individual’ and that in fact it is all very simple. The closing scene has the one man, Bud, facing the two candidates in a debate.
The movie reduced it to simple terms but what became evident to me is that what happens in ‘each’ individual is what determines happens in broader society. So it is legitimate, it seems to me, to recognize that I am reflected in society and society is a reflection of me. To the degree that I take my personal responsibility, to that degree, society will be more responsible.
Bud, was lost in a drunken stupor. Society is lost in its craziness. How does it change?
It changes when “I” take my responsibility and I awaken from my avoidances. When I stop running away from my pain and I choose to ‘wake up’, to notice the good all around me and to express gratitude, then things change.
The ‘person’ I am is buried by mounds of beliefs and fears and doubts and can not ‘sound through’. It’s easy to blame the world ‘outside’ of me of being crazy and the reason for my craziness.
Yet, its a two way street!
I believe that, yes, the individual does hold the ‘Swing Vote’. Before society can change, I need to change.
I need to stop blaming and finding ways to keep myself from waking up to my greatness. When I stop sedating myself with my booze or whatever medication I use to run away from my truth, I will come to realize that the world outside also will change. It never starts, ‘out there’. It always begins within ‘here’.
As I come out of my drunken stupor, the rest of the world will. It may not happen right away. Like the daughter in the movie, I may need to see the drunk as whole, long before he is, and contrary to the evidence, but by so doing I will contribute to the change I desire to see.
I will first be the change I want to see in the world. I hold the ‘Swing Vote’.
Have and awesome day!
Peace…
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