Ever since I’ve gone back to work (even if just on a part-time basis), I’ve been more motivated to become involved in politics, social events, and my community both locally, nationally, and globally. I suppose the elections last week had a bit to do with it too. This election year was something huge for me. On election day, I was officially made a Canadian resident. That same day, while the majority of the country was voting for our first black president in history, I was given my legal paperwork to live and work in Canada. It has been a move that was a long time coming.
When I first met Dave, and when we became “serious” and started talking about living together, moving in together, eventually getting married, making plans towards a family, etc., we talked about who was going to move where and how it was going to be done. At first, he was going to try to move into the states to be with me. The first couple of years of Bushism wasn’t so bad. The country wasn’t so polarized and people didn’t live in fear. I was pretty ignorant to what the government was doing. It wasn’t a big deal to live in America because I was happy in my own little world. When you’re happy, it’s hard to imagine other people having problems.
And then, shit hit the fan on 9-11. Everything changed. I became more nationally aware, more globally aware, and what I found out disgusted me. Dave and I seriously talked about me moving up to Canada instead, because we couldn’t picture ourselves growing a life together in a country that was, at the time, run with fascist ideals and religious values. Thus started my long-time plan to move to Canada.
Everything changed over time. My views became more acute, my opinions became more vocalized, my stance became more extreme. I will be the first to admit that I am biased, but given where I come from and who I work with and the environment I was raised in and the people I have come to know and love, one could understand why I have socialist ideals. And then after getting a taste of how people lived in Canada, I was appalled that America has for so long gotten away with the capitalist system that we’ve been living under. For so long, I was taught in school to believe that as long as I worked hard enough, I would earn my share of the nation’s wealth, and I would be taken care of. And then I started meeting people who fell through the cracks of such promises. And suddenly, I was meeting a lot of people. People who were working so hard and getting so little. People who were forgotten by their government’s promises. People who didn’t deserve to be homeless and jobless. Suddenly, the “white pickett fence” dream didn’t seem so real anymore. Didn’t so achievable anymore. At least not for so many of us.
Over time, my views became even more polarized from the norm. I didn’t see how someone working 60 hours a week just to make ends meet and feed their families was “less than” someone who worked 20 hours a week as the boss of a corporation, paying himself hundreds of thousands of dollars for telling people what to do. I didn’t see how one person can be “less deserving” because they struggle more. Happiness is so relative, and I am unimpressed by status. The more people I met, the more I realized that we all deserve, under the same “God,” the same universe, the same sky, the same things in life. We deserve basic shelter, basic healthcare (what is a pain pump??), basic education. We deserve all of those. I don’t care if a man is homeless and on drugs. He deserves basic healthcare to live, and the opportunity to education.
And thus, my socialist ideals were born. I didn’t know it was called “socialism” at the time though. I just knew that I was seeing a lot of people who were struggling from day to day, who didn’t deserve to be struggling from day to day, and I knew that there must be another way. And when I came to Canada, just on a visitor’s status at first, I saw what the majority of other people all over the world saw already: a nation that was willing and able to use their tax dollars to actually take care of their own.
And thus, my ideals became stronger, more powerful. I decided to talk to people about these views I had. And I realized I wasn’t alone. In fact, a socialist country is based on the concept of Utopia. Where everyone works equally — no one over-working or under-working — and everyone getting the basic needs met. It’s a lovely idea. It discourages greed and capitalist swindling from the rich down to the poor. Likewise, it discourages laziness and indifference and discompassion.
And I strongly believe in Gandhi’s phrase, “Be the change you wish to see.” And thus, I have been working and living under this phrase. I would love to live in a Utopian country. I know it doesn’t exist, as with every government and its country, like the U.S., there are flaws. But I, like so many of the world’s population outside of the U.S., am working on a Utopian society in my own way. I’m not afraid of giving some of what I have to someone who works just as hard as I am and sees less reward than I do.
And thus, this has led me to voting for Obama.
But I digress.
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