During the 2004 presidential election, I voted for John Kerry via absentee ballot. I was already at a point 4 years ago where I thought another 4 years of George Bush would be a terrible thing for this country. As someone who trusts science and logic before most other things, I found Bush’s views on things like religion, stem cell research, and gay marriage archaic. Because I voted absentee, my vote wasn’t even counted until after Bush had already been declared the winner. Despite being young and idealistic, the entire process basically confirmed my belief that most of what happens to us is beyond our control. Some people see that mantra as justification for religious or spiritual beliefs. Because there are forces at work that we cannot possibly understand or control, there must be some higher power overseeing our daily activities. As a very skeptical person who grew up (somewhat uncomfortably) in a very religious home, I see it as just the opposite. I’m not comfortable with the idea of a faceless deity having ultimate control of my destiny (for lack of a better, less cheesy word).
When my father had his heart attack and when my grandmothers passed away, the most difficult part for me was not the sense of loss or sorrow. That heals with time. The feeling of utter helplessness is what ate away at me, knowing that, even with all the medical expertise in the world, there was absolutely nothing I could do to help. It’s part of what drove me to apply to medical school. The more you study and practice medicine, the more likely it is that you’ll have the tiny piece of knowledge at the right time to save a life.
I’m straying on tangents, but my main point is that I don’t like feeling like I don’t have control over a situation. Unfortunately, experience has taught me that there are simply too many situations beyond our control. So when the 2008 election came around, I didn’t vote. I didn’t feel particularly strongly about either candidate until McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. I want to stress that this is just my personal opinion here: if you believe that abstinance programs will stop teenagers from having sex or that creationism is a legitimate science that should be taught in schools alongside evolution, you are not intelligent enough to run this country. But I didn’t vote for Obama because my absentee ballot would not have been counted until after the election had been decided. I didn’t want to make the effort because, again, it wouldn’t have mattered. And now that history has been made, I don’t regret not voting. I regret that I won’t be able to tell my children that I took part in electing the first African American president.
