The Cosmic Ledger

You are being watched. Use that time wisely.

The GOP lacks valuable life experiences. They don’t travel. And I mean really travel. Sure, they know what its like to go to Myrtle Beach or Las Vegas or take a cruise to Cozumel (where many of them are too afraid to leave the boat). They stay in their resorts. They make sure they don’t see the world as it actually exists, in all its ugliness and pain. And they mistake that as happiness. Or a blessing. And they get angry when you try to expose it to them. They call you names. Or threaten. “Try that in a small town” is such a dumbass statement championing this level of ignorance. A grift preying on the intellectual laziness of this type of American. ‘You don’t have to want to be better, you’re fine just as you are.’

But you’re not. None of us are. Every day with these big beautiful brains is a day we’re supposed to know a little more about the world, and to use that information to tweak who we are. Every day, you must be a little bit different—and a little bit better—than you were yesterday. Travel helps. It tweaks us.

When you travel to developing countries, you see real poverty. Real pain. Real suffering. Real anxieties about when and where your next meal comes. And its gut-wrenching. That’s when you learn about being human. You see the winners and losers of the world, and you feel anger towards the winners and love and sadness for the losers. You begin to hand out money in ways you would never consider back home. And you don’t ask for acknowledgment. You don’t want your name on a wall or a building. You want them to fill their stomachs and find some hope. You see them smile and you know that smile is real. “Thank you.” “I can feed my child with this.” That shit matters. And that’s when you feel the ledger at play.

The Cosmic Ledger.

There is a ledger the universe keeps on your impact on this world while you’re here. It doesn’t determine where you go when you die. It doesn’t promise you anything. It is simply a record of your entire existence. It is cold and honest. It doesn’t accept excuses. It never stops recording events. It is always watching. It never lies. And it never misses. The time you refused to help an old woman with a cup in her hand. Or the old man with an amputated leg. Or the awful policy you supported. Or that candidate you didn’t try to defeat. Or that friend you chose not to talk politics with to try to change his mind because you worried you might offend him. Or that anti-trans policy that made vulnerable young people feel afraid in their own bodies. Or that mother on the other side of the planet who needed your support through USAID to keep her child alive.

The universe records all of it.

For those who supported Trump, or for those who chose not to vote, or for those who threw away a third party vote, they are so far in the negative on this ledger that I think their die is cast. They will leave this world having made it worse by simply existing. They could go on to live many lifetimes of charitable deeds and still not come close to balancing out. Hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions, have perished from the ending of USAID. And Trump ran on it. He hid nothing. And people said they were good with it. Others decided making a useless political statement about rebellion was more important. Still others played the infuriatingly lazy card of “both corporatist parties are the same.” When they did that, they consigned so many precious lives to misery or death.

And the universe recorded all of it.

So yeah, we’re bleeding hearts. We’re pussies. We’re liberal commie soy boys and blah blah blah whatever the fuck you want to say about us. But we’re in the black. We tried to stop it. And we’re going to keep trying.

And the universe will record that, too.