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If you’ve ever been to church on Christmas or Easter, I’m sure you’ve heard this plea.
The minister/preacher/pastor/priest will implore his congregation to show up a little more often than just Christmas or Easter.
The irony is, the people who only go to church on Christmas or Easter always hear the same plea.
Well, I’d like to borrow this plea. Today, you’ll likely join millions of Americans at the polls to cast your vote in this presidential/congressional/senatorial and local election.
It’s one day where many people feel like they have some control over their future – that the decision they make on this day outweighs and even directs all of the decisions they make on the other hundreds and thousands of days between elections.
It’s one day where they can pat themselves on the back, and feel like they’ve made some small difference – some contribution.
But I disagree with that sentiment. The real difference to be made in our lives isn’t made on Election Day. The real differences are made in the other days. One vote every four years can’t possibly hold up to all the other little decisions – the little votes – we make during the other days.
The other days are more important.
The people we send to some fancy buildings in Washington, D.C. to bicker and argue and lie and obfuscate, to grandstand and conspire – they don’t matter. They don’t matter nearly as much as the people who go to work tomorrow and the next day and the next week, month and four years until the next election.
They don’t matter nearly as much as the things we buy and sell and build and grow.
They don’t put food on our table without taking it from someone else’s table. They don’t put fuel in our cars. They don’t put roofs over our heads. They don’t keep us warm at night or put smiles on our faces.
During our finest hours, they’re at best a distraction, and at worst a detractor. During our moments of weakness, they’re not with us.
So my plea today is for you to go ahead and vote in any way you wish to. Vote for Romney. Vote for Obama. Vote for whomever you care to – or don’t vote at all if that’s what you want to do.
But tomorrow, and the next day – I urge you to vote with your wallet. And to vote with your feet. To vote in the stock market. To vote at the grocery store.
The votes you make on the other days will overwhelm whatever votes we make today.
And there’s one vote you can make that will have a positive impact on yourself as an investor. Sign this petition that I’ve worked on, which tells your Senator to put a stop to the fiscal cliff which will raise your taxes come January 1.