On the side of the undecided.

I want to support Hillary.  I want to support Barack.  I am conflicted and therefore, paralyzed.  I want to feel committed to one candidate and I DON’T.  I am trying to make a choice based on the issues and I CAN’T.  I want a woman.  I want an African-American.  I want change, and to me both represent change, opportunity, hopefulness.  I’m trying to figure out why it’s so difficult for me to decide.  This is a place I’ve never been before in national politics.  If I support Hillary, then am I betraying the young people and African Americans of this country who are passionately behind Obama, who have been inspired, who are resonating to the vision, the dream of a better world where equality and justice for all has tangible meaning?  If I support Barack, am I turning my back on my gender, women’s struggle for economic and social parity, the civil rights of womanhood?  I’m trying to sort out the nuances in their platforms that would make it easier for me to decide on what’s important to me:  health care, the war in Iraq, immigration reform, the ECONOMY!  I keep reading and listening and still can’t decide.  I prefer Hillary’s position on health care and the economy.  I prefer Barak’s position on the war and immigration.  If I were 30 years younger, there would be no question about what I would do … the pragmatic, savvy politician would not get my vote.   I would favor the risk-taker, the inspirational pathfinder, the brash upstart, the defiant underdog.  My world now is rarely black and white, and I see all these qualities in both of them.  I wonder how long I will stay here on the side of the undecided because I know I am not taking a stand.

The truth be told.

A writer said to me, once something happens it becomes a fiction, for the mind is incapable of remembering the exact details and nuances of a particular event or set of circumstances. Even as something unfolds, I extrapolated, the mind is interpreting it based upon genetic coding and the way each of us experiences our environment. Is life, then, a fictional recounting of past history based upon some perception of reality? I think so, if the truth be told.

Some years back I was a reluctant grand juror in the Alexandria, Virginia, federal district court. The case was an infamous scandal and received lots of press coverage. Each month (grand jurors serve for 12 months), 24 of us were sequestered in the bowels of the courthouse, serving our three days of duty, listening dutifully to the testimony of witnesses and targets who were subpoenaed to appear. I was struck by how FBI agents found witnesses to testify under oath about something that had happened five years earlier. After the day-long parades of witnesses who held inconsistent recollections of the past, I realized how impossible it was to distinguish facts from impressions, perceptions and beliefs. The truth was only in the mind of the beholder. I often thought, after witnessing the witnesses, that truth became an unintentional fabrication, told based upon the pressure of the moment, what others wanted to hear, what shred of notoriety the witness might gain, or promise of an interview paid for by a tabloid magazine. Of course, this is only my recollection now of something that happened many years ago. I was the only juror to vote against an indictment. The case eventually went to public trial where it was defeated for not having sufficient evidence. The courts found that the evidence was based primarily on hearsay.

The same could be said for memoir writing. My personal history is just that, the intimate perceptions of my past, my experience, my interpretations. This is not truth. Another in my family could interpret the same situation differently — and has. If I am telling the story and the other is telling the story, but it is different, then who is to be believed?