America Will Display Her Soul to the World on November 7

Certain things have the capacity to speak to our individual souls. A tale of triumph, a particular movie, a style of decorating, a color, an odor. Each has the ability to cut through the layers of self-denial we pile on top of our deepest selves in order to make it through a day. A kind word, a compassionate act, a stirring piece of music, and suddenly our soul is laid bare. Time stands still and we are transported from the rat race and into a special place where the world is kind, and we remember what's truly a priority. We envision ourselves and others as products of the better nature of man. Dreams, for that brief moment under the spell of existing in a soul place, seem likely to come true. We dwell briefly in a second of ultimate truth.

While it is not practical or even possible to exist 24 hours a day floating on a dream cloud, and the often harsh, expedience-greedy, goal-oriented pace of modern life prevents all but the most masochistic from trying to move through the day with their souls hanging out, there are water-shed moments where it is necessary to tap into our deepest and better selves and send that message out into the universe. Things can be better than they are right now. Things can be made more fair, more just, more righteous. Perhaps our founding fathers knew this.

The founding fathers also understood the flip side of the coin, how absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely, that greed and avarice can destroy the goodness of a soul and the soul of a society. So they built into our system of government a means for citizens to express the depths of their soul priorities and alert their leaders to disdain for the actions of government should they find those leaders to be or to have become soulless.

One week from Tuesday will be such a water-shed moment. It is election day. It is the day when Americans will be given the opportunity to dig deep in their souls and identify those true priorities that are seldom obvious at the water-cooler, in the boardroom, or on the street corner, but which reside in the deepest recesses of our spiritual make-up and matter the most to our quality of life and the quality of life for those we love. It's again about truth. Truth to self and truth to others. It's about sending a message of truth out into the universe and letting it return to American society bringing back with it great benefit for all.

America will be showing it's true soul to the world on Tuesday, November 7. What depth of soul will the world see? Will it see the boardroom soul or the soul that allows grandmother to afford food and medicine? Will the world witness the layered-over soul used for joking at the water-cooler or the soul that understands the helpless feeling of unemployment? Will it see the cowboy soul of NFL entertainment or the one that knows torturing another human being is wrong? Will the world see the cocky superficial soul of flag-waving self-delusion or the one that holds sacred the genuine freedom afforded by the principle of habeous corpus?

America will be displaying her soul to the world on November 7. We will know soon enough the caliber of American soul the world will observe. And from that observation, the souls of the world will deduce a message. On the quality of that message, which will be broadcast into the universe, hinges the future message America will receive from the world in return.