Midnight meeting

Thursday, March 27, 2014

After a while, the faces blur and what the voices say falls into a murmur of repeated phrases that don’t always make sense.

To be diligent, you have to stay, and listen, even when you struggle to stay awake.

But when the clock ticks towards the bewitching hour, this gets difficult.

What they say is important, if only to them, and it is a duty to remain with them through the ordeal as a show of faith in this Democratic process we lost faith in after so many headlines of corruption, each a soldier in a war against complacency.

And tonight, of all nights, what they saw matters more as groups line up behind nervous unelected leaders, who come to raise Cain over this issue or that, over a questionable developer or the closing of a school, or even something as simple as a big brother traffic light.

This is a war of attrition as each little group takes a stand against the group many elected to make decisions, sometimes winning their point, only to lose the battle, sometimes – as is the case tonight – forcing the contestants to abandon the battlefield for another day, another night, another round of speeches we each must endure if only to save Democracy.

Everything is personal in this world, and we are all struggling with inner and exterior demons, those spirits that have somehow dedicated their soul interest to save or doom or souls, a democracy that debates in the chamber inside our heads, usually after our eyes have closed and we think we get our rest. And though we sometimes claim victory, we must admit the struggle that we undergo at those times after the clock has clicked passed midnight, when we are left to our own devices and must come to a consensus inside ourselves, having heard all of the pronouncements and judgments, we ourselves have made, and find that in the end, when we are most pressed to take a final vote, we generally win the day.

So that the morning after – whether it be a real morning such as the one I wake to this morning – or after some change of season when spring springs upon us finally, we realize we have survived the tempest and can still get on with our lives, and we realize that all of this, the struggle before and after midnight is what life is all about – decisions made and lived with, only to be re-decided again after the clock strikes twelve.