From the Editor: Be kind to each other

If you are reading this, though, the Nov. 6 election has passed. Maybe President Obama won a second term, or maybe Mitt Romney is now president-elect. Maybe the vote was so close that the results are still being tallied and we’re in for weeks of acrimonious re-counts. The sentiment might be elation, heartbreak, anxiety or rage.

Maybe Democrats have won control of Colorado’s House and Senate, and there’s a compelling hope that a bill for civil unions will pass this year. Or maybe Republicans were able to squeak out a narrow victory, and we’re headed for another tough and uncertain fight in the legislature.

If your “side” claimed some significant victories, you might be gracious and humble – you should probably be gracious and humble – or you might want to revel in it. If your “side” faces mostly disappointing realities, you may have a sense of wistful resignation, ready to mend rifts with ideological adversaries – or you might just be angry and shocked. You might feel defeated, skeptical that the other “side” cares about you or understands what’s at stake for the poor, the economy, same-sex couples, the national debt, the jobless, America’s role in the world, the dignity of seniors, the middle-class or the environment.

Whatever the election’s outcome means for you, the tremendous sense of agency the elections offer citizens is over until the next one. After so many months thinking about the future of Colorado and the nation, your greatest power is now over yourself.

The last months have revealed a deep division: Over whether the free market answers all questions, or if the economy won’t improve without more public investment in education and infrastructure. Over whether it’s paramount that we have leaders who support LGBT rights, or if equality is on the horizon no matter who wins elections.

But there’s one thing all sides can universally agree is a good thing: Love.

In that case, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a member of a winning majority or a defeated minority – we all have power over that.

Next on our calendar is the holiday season, and its focus is family and friends. The theme of this issue’s cover story is another universal: Food – not as physical sustenance, but as something that bonds us when we share it with those we care about. This is also a spiritual season for many, so I’ll offer some wisdom from the Dalai Lama, who says that in times of uncertainty and change – which Buddhism’s central theme insists is all the time – the lesson is the same as it is in times of triumph and in times of loss: The most important thing we can do, in any situation, is be kind to one another.

You won’t find a major religion that doesn’t advocate that. “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you,” reads the New Testament’s Ephesians 4:32. “Be good to parents, and to relatives, and orphans, and the needy, and the related neighbor and the unrelated neighbor, and the close companion and the traveller” – a translation from Sura 4, verse 36 in the Qur’an. The book of Micah, shared among Jews as part of the Torah and among Christians as part of the Old Testament, contains the verse: ““He has told you, O Man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you: only to do justice and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your G-d.”

Of course kindness is a virtue also among those who have no religion or spiritual beliefs at all. So as the election emerges in the rear-view mirror, we can be thankful in this: While we disagree over what constitutes “justice,” whose facts are facts, what’s science or opinion, what’s an appropriate role for government, what ideologies are vindicated by history and what the future holds for this country’s material wealth, you can surely come up with some examples in which all of us  agree about what’s kind.