In the movie, "Fried Green Tomatoes," Mary Louise Parker's character, Ruth, is dying. She is suffering from cancer and she knows that her time is up. When she dies, someone remarks, "A Lady always knows when it is time to leave." The idea here is that there is some grace when knowing that your time is up and when you should make your exit.
I have been lucky enough to attend some wonderful concerts in my life. Hearing Elton John, Billy Joel, Better Midler, and Josh Groban have been fantastic experiences. When the concert ended, the whole audience cheered hard and more than one deserved encore was given. I have also been to a few concernts and plays which have not been all that great. Some of these not so great acts should have left the stage as soon as their act was over. They did not warrant an encore.
Knowing that it is the time. I think there are certain occasions when politicians should know that their time is up. I do think that politicians need to lose graciously. Take Donald Trump. The US election was almost a year ago. After a lengthy counting process, Joe Biden was declared the winner. He received 74 more electoral votes than Trump did and he received 7 million more votes than Trump did. Yet Trump and his supporters are still supporting the big lie that Trump won. One year on, and Trump has yet to admit that he has lost. He is still trying to find a media platform where he can tell his supporters that he had really won the election. Trump's refusal to accept the results, undermines the democratic process. He refuses to admit that it is time to exit stage right.
The whole point of a democracy is that it does allow for the people to speak. I don't always get my way come election time. That is the way elections work. We vote. Sometimes we win. Sometimes we lose. For instance, I will share with you that in the recent referendum, I voted in favour of adopting Daylight time year round. I grew up in Saskatchewan. There we do not change our clocks. The cows don't change their clocks, so why should we. However, when the votes were counted, my opinion lost by a narrow margin. As a believer in democracy, I accept the fact that I will have to adjust my clocks every few months because that is what people voted for. Next week, it will be time for me to set the clock once more. Blessings.
