Cartwheels in The Legislature

Cartwheels at Parliament!

So, I was walking by Queen's Park the other day and saw something that immediately made me nostalgic: a bunch of kids teaching another kid how to do a cartwheel. No, I'm not talking about about Hudak trying to explain his loss in KW (too soon?), it was legitimately a group of kids, learning how to cartwheel.

They kept yelling something to the other kid, and this is really what took me back, "just let yourself fall, stop being so scared!" It reminded me of when I did my first cartwheel (at an age I'm not super proud of by the way) and how much trouble I had in learning. See, you can't do a cartwheel and maintain perfect control over how you're moving. If you try to control the fall, you'll screw the cartwheel up and do a crappy, half cartwheel...like this. 

Instead, you actually have to just let yourself fall, trust gravity and your intuition, and stop being so damned scared.

I write this not because I'm about to take up gymnastics or something, but because I think that this is a really good analogy for politics. Many of the political leaders across the country desperately want to do a cartwheel but are stuck trying to do something too controlled. Yes, in politics you want to be a careful planner and often control as much as you can, but that can't be all you're about.

The best politicians, the one's who really accomplished something, decided what they wanted to do, picked a line along the grass, then gave into the fall and hoped something good would come of it all. Oh sure, just like a botched cartwheel, they sometimes fell on their asses, but in the end they actually tried.

There are lots of ways to do politics and to make decisions, some will be more satisfying than others. Winning lots of elections is fun, rewarding, and in the best cases can give you more time to do the things you think need doing. But if you aren't taking chances, making the tougher choices and trusting your gut and gravity, then really, you're just going to get a crappy assed half cartwheel done, and always regret never having really tried.

-exit soapbox-

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