A recent conversation

I have had some stunningly fantastic conversations recently.  Deep, interesting and insightful conversations with some really fascinating people.  Some of them are really short, and really amazing - don’t think they all have to be hour long epic stories. 

The single best conversation I had today was with my kids. 

As a parent, I’m pretty sensitive to different details around me.  Time with my kids is precious and every second needs to count.  Some days work better than others, but I genuinely try to make every hour of every day worthwhile. 

I knew this was a weekend that wasn’t going to go great because I had work I had to get accomplished.  Fair enough, we still spent time together and had fun time together as a family.  But I try to minimize the impact of external factors. 

Talk turned to provincial politics and my new-found sense of engagement.  We discussed how we could use our time together to be productive and still have great time together.  One of the things we mentioned was how we delivered signs on the Nenshi campaign, how we helped each other and how we rewarded ourselves with ice cream and celebration together. 

So I told the kids that politics meant simply to make group decisions.  One of the things I’m sensitive about is that some of the upcoming events are going to impact our time together and I want to keep our together time as great time.  We made some group decisions today on how to approach some of the upcoming weekend events. 

Afterward I asked the kids why they thought I was involved with the Alberta Party.  My daughter’s answer was, “Because you care about democracy.“  My son’s answer was, “Because you want everyone to be involved.“ 

I don’t have an answer better than those. 

Alberta’s future is bright if we can give our children the opportunity to be brilliant.  We need to improve those group decisions we have to make.  We need better politics.  We need better governance.  We will create our future, we will reach it through widespread engagement in democracy.