The realwork continues long afterwe cast our ballots

An insignificant speck of debris ran into his somber best friend last week out on a South Texas dirt road.

Being careful to social distance, he asked his friend what was wrong.

“It was too close,” the sad speck said. “After that big early voting surge? It wasn’t what any of us expected.”

The second speck stood silently for a moment, then sat crosslegged on the ground.

“Yeah, I know what we were expecting,” he answered, looking off into the sky. “And you know I voted for the other guy.

Well, whatever. We’ve got to move on now.”

“We’ve disagreed before, but it’s not even that,” the first speck said. “It’s that overwhelming feeling of powerlessness again. I mean, I made a plan. I put on my mask, I stood in line. I voted and posted that ‘I voted!’ sticker all over social media. I felt like I was doing my duty, making a difference. But on Election Night, I just sat there on the couch with a bag of chips, feeling powerless.”

The second speck nodded knowingly.

“You know me. I’m not a sign-in-the-yard type,” the sad speck continued. “I don’t really know howthe systemworks or who to believe. I don’t quite understand the electoral vote or the red-and-blue maps changing on every channel. I’ve just always assumed the counting was legit, and trusted the system was working. Now, I just don’t know if I even made a difference. Never

mind the outcome, I’m just disappointed in everyone.”

A cool November breeze kicked up and carried a few loud specks past. They were talking about not allowing themselves to be silenced, but their voices got softer as they blew farther away.

“Of course you made a difference,” his friend replied. “I felt the same way while I watched election results last week. But you know what? My kid asked me for help on his algebra homework. He needed help with slope-intercept form.”

“Y= mx+b?” the sad speck said, feeling good about having remembered the formula.

“Yeah,” his friend nodded. “That’s the one. I had to look at his class notes, but I explained the formula, and he looked at me as if I were babbling away in a different language. We looked up a Khan Academy video. We looked up a video on YouTube. Still nothing. He just didn’t get it. He threw his pencil and said he just didn’t know what to do.”

Intrigued, the sad speck perked up.

“He felt powerless,” the speck continued. “And I did too, because I couldn’t explain it. It was a bad feeling.”

“Yeah,” the sad speck agreed. “We kept at it,” the speck continued, “I told him throwing pencils wouldn’t help. Staring at the paper and doing nothing wouldn’t help. Making excuses and complaining about his teacher wouldn’t help. But asking his mom? That might help. And guess what? She was able to explain it, so he solved the problem without her having to give him the answers.”

“That’s great!” the sad speck said, clapping. “She’s a clever one.”

“Well, she is,” the speck agreed. “But the whole thing got me to thinking about how we only feel powerless when the answer isn’t easy and clear. And maybe part of the problem we have after elections is that we stop acting once the polls close because it’s too hard to know what to do next.”

“What are we supposed to do?” the sad speck shrugged.

“Work on the problems,” the friend said. “We have to review our notes, learn from the mistakes and avoid wasting time blaming everybody else. We have to look for the clever ones, preferably before it’s past our bedtime.”

Feeling better about things, the sad speck stood up and stretched his arms skyward.

And only slightly out of earshot, the loud and unruly but otherwise insignificant specks — which had gathered together to make a tight clump of dirt — got lodged into the treads of a tire and were taken away.

“They never see it coming,” the second speck said, shaking his head.