Division or Balance?

     A friend of ours has been feeling a little unwell lately. She thought from her symptoms that she may be diabetic.  It turnout she has vertigo.  She didn’t think I would know what that was. I told her that I had had it myself. In my case it was a result of poor diet, being out of shape and a lot of stress at the time. I corrected the causes and the symptoms went away.

    I guess she thought I wouldn’t know what vertigo was because it is so uncommon. It may not be as uncommon as some think though.

   Vertigo is the inability to maintain one’s balance. It originates in the inner ear where our brains tell us whether we are floating on an even keel. When that mechanism fails it is as if we cannot walk a straight line. When I had it I often had to find something to lean on fearing I might lose my balance and fall down.

   A recent newspaper article by a well known and widely respected political analyst stated that the new city council is divided. I’m not sure I agree. The last council had a strong leader and some very good followers. Those who didn’t care to follow simply resigned. Suitable replacements were appointed who would of course march lock stepped with the others. That is not a good political balance. Apparently most voters in the last election didn’t think so either.

   If this council is divided so are the state and federal governments. They have both Republicans and Democrats all in the same room! How can they get anything done with all that arguing. Is that ‘division’ or is it balance? Could it be that arguing is it what makes good government?

   Another newspaper commentator recently stated that our federal government seems to go way over to the left for a while and then swing way over to the right. Is that an imperfection in the system or is that just how it’s supposed to work?

  I understand that the most up to date navigational systems are almost never directly on course. The auto pilot in an airplane is constantly correcting itself. It goes a little more to the left and a little more to the right. But it always arrives at the landing strip. How can a device that is never right get you where you want to go?

  The men who designed  our system of government didn’t know anything about flying an airplane. They did know about human nature. Even back then they realized that we live our lives be trial and error, constantly correcting our course. We may say we have to work harder or that we have to spend more time with my family. In the end we get back on course and find our destination.

  So I don’t agree that our new city council will be our destruction. I don’t see us sliding down a slippery slope or falling through the ice. I see this simply as a course correction.