Just my opinion: “Hear it in the wind”

I recently spent a few days in the Laurentian Mountains, Mont-Tremblant, about 90 minutes west of Montreal. I was there for my niece’s wedding, which took place in a wooded and mountainous area in the province of Quebec.

We stayed in a chalet near the main house, a mile from the forest. We drove to our chalet and were greeted by three white-tailed deer. It was a beautiful place, quiet, the kind of place where you have the opportunity to get rid of all the “baggage” that surrounds us every day, the kind of place where you can calmly think about who you are is a time for introspection about the people you care about.

You feel it in the crisp morning air, see it in the leaves just reaching their colorful peak, and hear it in the wind.

We are in the midst of perhaps the most contentious election in our history, rivaling the poison of Nazi Germany. We have a major political candidate who talks about “genes” and immigrants “poisoning the blood of America.”

I remember the words of former Auschwitz SS man Oskar Gröning, who explained the killing of Jewish children: “The children are not the enemy of the moment. The enemy is the blood within them. The enemy is growing up to be a Jew, which could become dangerous. And that’s why the children were also included.”

On a national level, this is an election marked by a multitude of lies that too many Americans accept as truth. And the criticism is not only true at the national level, but has also been reflected in our local elections. You can read it on some neighborhood sites around Rhode Island, where lies and ridicule obscure the sites’ true purpose of connecting neighbors and sharing important resources.

Communities are being displaced by distrust, hatred and division.

As I sit in the chalet and look at the surrounding mountains, I think about the importance of reclaiming community as a community of individuals working together for the benefit of family, friends and neighbors.

One of the things I find so powerful about community is the way we make connections with each other, sometimes with people we barely know.

I remember the story of the funeral, where family and friends talked about “the heart and soul” of the deceased and how they never told him in life how important he was to them, how generous and kind he was. How these thoughts were now left to his eulogy.

Communities are held together by the things they share and the ways in which they reach out to one another in so many ways.

I am tired of efforts to divide our communities and pit neighbors with baseless claims that serve only personal gain. I wonder if parents who accept politicians’ lies would also accept them from their children?

I hope that when the dust clears after this election, communities will come together again and we will regain our respect for one another, regardless of race, ethnicity or religion.

Strong communities, says Strong Family Illinois, “are the foundation of society…and provide stability, a critical factor in an individual’s ability to thrive.” Strong Family Illinois reminds us that survival has often depended on communities.

I wait for the day when neighbors stop fighting with neighbors over political differences, when parents once again realize the importance of instilling a sense of integrity in their children – these are just my random thoughts when I go to the mountains I look around our chalet, impressed by the beauty and the silence.