Why don't we involve ourselves in politics?

We are always free to choose, but when we don’t decide anything, we’re letting others decide for ourselves. This might sound confusing but it’s true. If you don’t care about some decision you’re supposed to make, people will take that decision for you and your only option will be to accept and follow whatever they chose.

When the political debate took place on April 6th, I couldn’t believe that from almost 600 students only 18 were the ones who raised their hands to participate. The rest could’ve had a lot of reasons for not getting involved like: being afraid of speaking in public, or being afraid of doing it wrong, or stammering there, etc. But most of those who didn’t participate didn’t do it just because they had no interest. They had no interest in participating nor in investigating and debating about political topics.

This is what happens also during major and important elections. There are people that don’t vote because they have specific reasons for not doing it, but most of them don’t do it just because they have no interest on choosing who will be leading their communities. Moreover, even people that don’t search to participate in politics (I mean, like getting involved with a political party) and limit themselves just to vote, are letting others choose for them. It is true that when a good man doesn’t care about politics, his punishment will be to be ruled by some man who isn’t as good or as smart as him.

I think that people should get much more involved in politics because right now they are in a “comfort zone” and they really like being there, not moving a finger but complaining about the wrong decisions that their leaders are making. It’s time for everybody to speak out but not only to speak, to do something. It’s true that it’s really comfortable to watch others struggle with our complicated issues, but commodities are gone when the results are evident. What worries me the most is that, since people are not eager to participate, power is always centered in the same small circle of people. The worst part is that most of them don’t work for the benefit of their communities but for themselves. So why are we letting this happen?

It was amazing for me to see that this conformism starts practically since we’re toddlers and it continues in high school and up until our adulthood. I saw the conformism in the tec students when they said: “que flojera”. “Que flojera” search for information, prepare for the debate, involve in politics, make an effort to do something good, do something extracurricular. Or simply “I just have much more important other things to do”.
Well, we ALL have a lot of things to do, our parents too, but we can always make a space in our agenda to participate with our community because if not, our punishment will be three times greater than the sacrifice we need to make in order to raise our voices. Think about it and please, get out of your “comfort zone”.