A few years ago, a friend told us he wasn’t into politics. Even Michelle Obama recounts in her recent biography Becoming how much she resisted her husband’s ever deeper involvement in politics because she wasn’t “into politics.”
“Being into politics” doesn’t exclusively mean being educated, interested and opinionated regarding the history and politics of your country. You don’t have to run for office to “be political.”
Simply becoming aware of the repercussions of your own lifestyle choices and the underlying beliefs they come from makes you a bit political. Your and my lifestyle choices, bundled with those of millions of others, eventually express themselves in some legislation or absence thereof, some movement or absence thereof, some shift or absence thereof. Choosing the digital version of your newspaper results in less logging and joins the sustainability movement towards better stewardship of our planet when millions do it (full disclosure: I am guilty of reading the paper paper). Inspecting your own internal biases and becoming aware of America’s baked-in racism or voter suppression in all its forms, eventually expresses itself in political shifts when you, me and others no longer tolerate it.
You become political when, instead of throwing your arms up in frustration because you believe that one voice doesn’t make a difference, you actually make a change somewhere in your life. You become political when you vote and encourage others to vote instead of simply complaining. Being political means taking action instead of sitting back. Kennedy said it so clearly: ”Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” When you turn your beliefs into actions, such as reducing animal abuse by refraining from buying a fur coat or purchasing solar panels or an electric car as a form of turning away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energies, you are “political.” Inaction, on the other hand, maintains the status quo, in your own life and on a larger scale through all the others who don’t budge either. Ultimately, that’s political too because things remain the way they are now. Hence, it’s really difficult “not to be political.”