It seems like just yesterday I was getting my driver’s license and beginning to feel like an adult. That in itself felt like so much power, but now, as an 18-year-old, I am beginning to realize how the various privileges we are given with age should not be taken for granted. Though I may be considered a legal adult, I’ve felt anxiety throughout this entire election process knowing that my peers and I now have a responsibility to be educated in and participate in politics. I’m not a U.S. citizen so I can’t vote in the election, but I am still trying to familiarize myself in the confusing and difficult-to-navigate world of politics. Though my parents have their own particular political views, they have always encouraged me to develop my own opinions about politics as well. That being said, the more I researched each candidate, the more conflicted I became with my own values. In terms of analyzing policy, I began to second-guess what I thought was best not only for me but for the good of the country. As I expressed these concerns to my dad, he showed me a video of a speech Warren Buffett gave to a crowd of younger people in Nebraska. The entire speech fascinated me, but one thing he said in particular changed my entire viewpoint on politics.
He said something along these lines:
Imagine you are in your mother’s womb, a few weeks from being born, and a genie comes to you with a proposal. The proposal is that he is bestowing upon you the power to create what kind of world you would like to be born into. You get to create what policies are established in the world you are born into, and you decide the type of world in which you will eventually inhabit. Now of course, this seems too good to be true, and everyone knows that a deal with a genie is one with an Achilles' heel, so you proceed to ask what the catch is. The genie continues and says, “You have the ability to decide what kind of world you are born into, however, when you eventually are ready to be born you will not be able to control whether you are male, female, rich, poor, gay, straight, black, white, smart, dumb, healthy, disabled, so on and so forth.”
With this in mind, what kind of vision for America would you be passionate about? Would it make you more cognizant about every group in society, and would it change your perspective on what you deemed crucial in terms of protecting everyone under the law?
The thing is, I could not control whether or not I was born healthy just as someone with a disability could not control whether or not they were born with a disability. No one has the ability to control the outcome of the ovarian lottery, and whether you were born into a life of privilege or disadvantage, as you approach this upcoming election, remember to vote for a candidate whose vision for our country resemble the policies you would concoct and relay to the genie. As U.S. citizens, all of you have the power to decide who you want the figurehead for the next four years to be. Whoever you choose to support in this election, support them with integrity. Educate yourselves on the platforms of each candidate so that your vote will not be a decision taken lightly or one made in haste. To all of my peers that will be voting for the first time in this election: By being born in America you are a lottery winner and have a power that should not be taken for granted. A fraction of the world has yet to acquire the ability to vote for their leaders, but, at 18 years old, you do. This power can come with reward and with consequence, but as Kennedy once said, “Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future."
