Honest, Hopeful, Grateful

It has been a week since the Primary election and I have been struggling to find something profound to say about the results. I haven’t come up with much, but during a forum I was asked a question that feels like a good roadmap for looking at the whole effort.

What are three adjectives that best describe you and your campaign?

My answer: honest, hopeful, and grateful.

Honest

Of course, I am disappointed in the outcome. If I am sad, it is because I was unable to repay the enormous investment of time and money people put into me. I am afraid I asked too much and gave too little return. That’s a feeling that will take some time to resolve.

Honestly, I have found some relief in having a resolution. Campaigns are like seasons with one big pass/fail test at the end. You work so hard for what feels like a lifetime and then it all stops overnight. Win or lose, taking the time to slow down, look back, and digest is important. I have been luxuriating in the ordinary this week: cooking, dropping the girls off, mowing my lawn. Things I did before the campaign and will keep doing long after it — reminders that most of life happens in the ordinary days between the big ones.

And honestly, losing an election is not even close to the hardest thing I’ve ever done. This campaign was a joy and a privilege for me — not an identity. I am still here, I am not going anywhere, and life is good!

Grateful

My gratitude list is endless — but here is a start:

• Family — Adrienne, Devon, Bayley gave up so much to let me do this. My parents were the motivation. All of their endless love and support sustains me.

• The campaign team — thanks to all the staff, interns, close friends and advisors that made up the McLaren for Vermont family. They saw the best and worst of me. They worked impossibly hard, believed in this thing on the days when that was easy and on the days when it wasn’t, and made the whole experience more fun than a campaign probably has any right to be.

• The people who volunteered, donated, hosted us, made phone calls, put up signs, wrote letters, brought friends to events, or told someone why they believed in me. Running statewide meant asking people, over and over again, to give us their time. So many people did.

• And everyone who let me into a little part of their life over the last seven months. People invited me into their homes and businesses, told me what they were worried about, what they loved about Vermont, and what they hoped it could become. I learned an enormous amount from all of you.

A campaign gives you a strange and wonderful excuse to travel all over the state you grew up in and ask people what matters to them. I will be grateful for that gift for the rest of my life.

Hopeful

In the last few days of the campaign, I had a voter tell me something: “Certainty is an illusion. Happiness is a choice.” He’s right — and so is hope.

I said over and over again that I refuse to be the last generation of working class kid that gets to live the life of their dreams here in Vermont. Our efforts were not the work of one election cycle or one campaign. It is work built on generations before us and work that will continue long after we are gone. An election can end a campaign, but it cannot settle the questions that brought us into it in the first place.

So I choose to be hopeful — not because it is easy but because it is hard. The outcomes of life are never guaranteed. But when you do choose work worth doing with people you love, hope is always right around the corner. The only way to fail is to stop trying, and there is hope in the trying.

Ulysses

One of the people at our campaign kickoff party was Larry Laush, or as I knew him, Mr. Laush. He was my middle school English teacher and I was thrilled to see him. Mr. Laush sparked a love of literature I have carried with me ever since his 8th grade poetry unit changed my life and helped me discover my own voice in the written word. After the campaign ended, I returned to one of the works that Mr. Laush first introduced me to.

Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson is the story of an aging king and restless wanderer. It is filled with nostalgia and potential. Tinged with sadness, glory, irony, and futility. At once, Ulysses understands that his journey has given him so much:

“I am a part of all that I have met”

But satisfaction is not found in any particular destination. Ulysses finds his purpose — his hope — in the pursuit. The journey matters because of what it asks of us and because of what we become along the way.

“Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

So right now, my only plan is to keep moving forward — honest about where we are, grateful for where we’ve been, and hopeful for what will be.

Thank you for making this journey special. Love you all,

Ryan