A young Facebook friend recently posted that he’d vote red until he was dead.

I didn’t comment, but I gave that some thought.

To confess allegiance to a political party for, say, 50 more years of life, denotes a type of hubris that, sadly, too many people possess.

I’m not trashing the Republican party, here. I could say the same if his commitment was to the Democratic party. My problem lies with his blind pronouncement of loyalty to an unknown future. His words tell me that he’s willing to forego thought, and will not entertain questions beyond an arbitrary line he’s drawn in the sand. He’s telling me that he thinks he already knows all there is to know.

That bothers me.

I’ve carried that mindset onto more than one battlefield, myself.

In the religious certitude of my teenage years, I argued the fine points of scripture with people from other religions, as though I was defending God himself: a commission I was sure I would keep until I was dead.

My noble intentions sprang from a pure heart, but questions arose, as they have a way of doing. When cornered by a family friend who accused me of spreading “doctrines of devils,” I escaped from her attack to wander in the wilderness, learning the hard way that, in spite of my former certainty, I really knew nothing about God’s ways at all.

In like manner, I once believed that Republicanism was the be-all and end-all of political doctrine.

That, too, changed, 15 years ago, when I first heard President John F. Kennedy speak.

As a toddler, I was unphased by his assassination. Afterward, I never questioned the circumstances of his death. A lone gunman did it, we were told. I assumed it was true. By hindsight, I find it strange that the adults around me never talked about the Kennedy assassination: the biggest coup of the past century, one that happened during my lifetime. Perhaps it’s because they wrote Kennedy off for being a Democrat, a Catholic and a womanizer. What more was there to know?

Plenty, I found out.

The night was dark, and I was home alone, when I stumbled upon — and listened to — President Kennedy’s April 1961 speech to the American Newspaper Publishers Association. By the time I finished, I was looking over my shoulder, to make sure I was still alone.  The ground had shifted beneath me. After listening to Kennedy’s speech, I became aware — by chilling intuition — that there was much I didn’t know. The question became not whether there was a conspiracy, rather, who were the perpetrators?

I set about learning more.

Truth, I learned, is elusive, and, with certain topics, like the Kennedy assassination, it may remain forever hidden.

I’ve since learned that truth may not be as we’ve always supposed, and it’s okay to change our minds with new information or a better perspective.

It’s okay to ask questions. Seek and ye shall find.

Mark Twain believed that to learn and to change is to grow, citing the example of young people who are expected to do those very things.

In his essay, Consistency, he asserts that “change is the law of [a person’s] being.”

A man can’t be consistent to that law of growth if he’s stuck in a rut, Twain believed.

Asking questions is the first step of change, of growth. To close one’s mind to new information can spell a type of living death. I’m not suggesting that we believe everything that comes down the pike, but that there’s no harm in considering it, then sifting the wheat from the chaff.

Truth doesn’t live within brick and mortar and behind party lines.

Today, I’m reluctant to don a party label and be captured within somebody’s ideas of what I should believe.

A party label doesn’t make a candidate (or a voter) a sinner or a saint.

“By their fruits, ye shall know them.”

Much can be learned about a candidate’s character from unbiased news sources. Much can be learned about an incumbent’s voting history by checking legislative records. Find out what’s knowable.

I’d like to believe that we have a few ethical elected officials and candidates left, of whatever stripe, but I fear they’re becoming fewer.

My questions are these: Has an incumbent used (or voted to use) public funds or the power of his position for personal gain? Have they voted to bribe wealthy corporations with large tax credits, at the expense of those who struggle to put food on the table? Are they willing to vote across the partisan divide?

Your questions might be different than mine, and that’s okay. The important thing is to open your mind. Ask questions. Learn. Grow. Don’t bury yourself in a rut, before it’s time for the grave.

I also recommend reading or listening to President Kennedy’s April 1961 speech (https://tinyurl.com/4f5y4rhs). I daresay that you’ve never heard anything like it.

Sheila Harris is a long-time Barry County resident and a sales executive and investigative reporter for the Cassville Democrat with a particular interest in environmental topics. She may be reached at [email protected].