11 Jun I am not going to vote

‘I’m not going to vote,’ says my daughter, ‘I don’t believe in it anymore.’ My wife responds from her heart: ‘It is important to vote because that’s how you can exert your influence. It is actually positive to participate.’

‘I also haven’t voted for a long time,’ I say. ‘When I lived in France, casting my vote was anyway a bit more complicated, but even then I consciously chose not to vote.’ I still remember that I had just moved to Paris, where I was attending my acting training. As I walked through the streets or took the metro and saw the crowds of people who often seemed rushed and looked straight ahead, not making contact with each other and appearing unhappy, I thought to myself: is this what we wanted? Is this what humanity envisioned as ideal? All of us together in gigantic metropolises, far removed from nature and from awareness of animals and the planet, where everyone lives in a small part of a building, with a lot of loneliness and gloom.

Her friends
At that time I lived on the fifth floor of a chambre de bonne, my neighbor Jeanne was old and alone. When she walked up the stairs with her swollen legs with her shopping bag under her arm, she had to wait a while to catch her breath.
Her only friends were the pigeons that she fed sitting on a bench with leftovers and they cheekily sat on her hand. When we got to know each other a little better, she confided in me that if she had the courage, she would jump into the Seine from Pont Neuf to put an end to it.

I couldn’t identify with this oppresive world. With my theater friends, I tried to do it differently, to build a different kind of existence.

From the inside out
When I returned to the Netherlands years later as a single parent, my wife had passed away young, I realized that I needed the system. It helped me get everything back on track with a home, assistance, and a preschool.

My attitude changed. I wanted to help change the system from the inside out. I understood that my contribution by participating would be greater than if I stood outside of it. I felt co-responsible for what I saw in terms of inequality, exploitation of the earth, and selfishness. I started voting again.

My daughter listens attentively to my story. ‘And yet I’m not going to vote,’ she says. ‘It just doesn’t appeal to me. There is no consideration for the earth and the climate. We are ruining the world for the next generations.’ I think to myself: my daughter’s aversion to politics is yet another result of this clumsy cabinet, which in my eyes is a prime example of short-term thinking and primarily self-interest.

*This post has been automatically translated from Dutch