Is Presidents Day a celebration of Washington’s birthday, both Washington and Lincoln’s birthdays, or a celebration of presidents in general? Does it really matter? Maybe what we really need is a Citizens Day, in which we all celebrate the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, honoring participatory democracy itself.
How do you honor your role as a citizen by participating in the democratic process?
Wouldn’t it be great if it were possible to build shelters that would protect us from the fallout of our unfortunate choices? In these little bunkers we wouldn’t have to deal with the unkind words we said to our spouse, our procrastination on an important work project, the effects of excessive drinking or the lie that was supposed to make things easier. Unfortunately, attempts to hide from the fallout of our choices rarely are successful, and often make things worse.
How have you chosen to step out from a protective bunker and face the results of your choices?
The athlete running around and around the track doesn’t actually get anywhere. All that effort to remain in essentially the same place. And yet, while the terrain never alters, the runner herself changes, growing stronger, faster, more determined.
How have you grown when it has looked like you were getting nowhere?
There is nothing quite like the feeling of creation, of taking basic materials and using your craft and imagination to build something that wasn’t there before. Making something of clay or wood or fiber, of metal or words or sound, we participate in our own creation myth, bringing something to light that didn’t exist before we took it upon ourselves to create. In that moment of creation we become divine.
What do you create?
The ancient Greeks famously came up with a variety of words for love, including eros—romantic love, philia—loyalty and friendship, and agape—unconditional love. Valentine’s Day tends to center on eros, or a sappier kind of greeting card love the Greeks never imagined.
This Valentine’s Day, what kind of love do you celebrate? What word might you invent to describe this kind of love?
