EAT ME OR DRINK ME

There comes a time in your life, where on a human level you have to make a choice you don’t want to make. I have made many choices, and a lot of them were not savoured by any stretch of the imagination. There are days I have struggled to step out of bed with the weight of the decisions I’ve made. As a politician people look to me for answers, and sometimes they want answers I can’t give, even if I want to give them.

I’ve had to choose between families freezing to death or starving to death. I’ve had to choose to fund one charity over another. I’ve had to choose to cut back on services that have seen people die because they couldn’t get the help they needed. I’m mentally strong, but I’m not impervious. I feel things like any other human.

Those decisions haunt me but they also define me. Each time the weight drags me just that bit further down, but the rise afterwards gets just that bit higher. Those decisions haunt me, but that’s a good thing. If they haunt me it means I make them with the best of intentions, and it’s better for everyone that I take those decisions over someone who doesn’t care enough. And the gravitas of these decisions only makes me stronger.

And that is why I can’t abide it when people either can’t make decisions for themselves, or limit themselves to decisions that have no impact on the world at large. When the biggest decision someone makes is whether to shower in the main bathroom or their en suite it does not give me hope for the future of this planet.

And that’s why I can’t stand by and let Alice take her plaudits without pointing out that Alice’s biggest decisions in life were whether or not to follow a rabbit into a hole, and whether to pick the item labelled “eat me” or the one labelled “drink me”. Alice is exactly the example of the kind of person who coasts through life, causing little damage but contributing nothing to society or the world around her. And that is the gravest decision she makes.

If you don’t intend to change the world for the better, then really what are you doing in life? Even if you only want to make it better for yourself, that is still a positive impact on the world. But Alice, no. My dear Sweet Alice would rather exist in her own little world than improve the real one around her. And that is why my choice this week is simple.

Alice does not deserve to hold this title again. My choice this week is to win or to lose. I choose to win. I realise that aside from personal gain, me holding this belt is better for the whole of OSW, and that’s why everyone else chooses me too.

The choice between me and Sweet Alice is simple, when you boil it down.

Choose someone who cares. Vote Whitlock.