After spending too much time reading about politics on social media, I put my phone on the charger and went into the kitchen to catch up on some long-neglected chores.

My primary responsibility is to the people in the four walls of this house.

I’ll stick to this time and this place and magnify my role in the micropolitics of this household and wash my hands of the rest of it. After all, “the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.”

[Photo by Peanut Della Cruz via Creative Commons]

But as I started to assemble various items into a lunch box, I recall Kelsey Timmerman’s book Where Am I Eating, which I just read the September.  The author traces the origins of his food back to individuals who are growing, harvesting and packing my food. As I look around my kitchen, I can imagine the hands of thousands of workers who labored so that I can have not only carrots and cardamom but cabinets and cookware.

It’s more difficult to affix myself to one extreme in the spectra of local vs global than I initially imagined.

I also tend to gravitate more towards issues affecting the domestic sphere more than the public sphere. Issues such as housing, food supply, childcare, education and eldercare pique my interest more than issues of finance, construction, business development, military action and trade.

But the spectrum between the domestic sphere and public sphere breaks down when I witness friends and family affected positively or negatively by policies in the more “Man’s World” political topics:  New job opportunities and downsized jobs.  Benefits for veterans helping people get housing and education and families separated by deployment or even separated by death during active duty.  Retirement benefits taking an upswing because of the stock market and housing market and then retirement benefits decimated by unexpected downturns in these markets.

Maybe I should read more news stories online that have traditionally been housed in the “Business Section” of old school newspapers?  It’s not a Man’s World, but Everyone’s World, and women are influence and can be influencers beyond the domestic sphere.

But even if I do decide to think more globally and think more about public-sphere issues, how much time do I want to spend?

I could attend local meetings, volunteer in my community, and research all the issues and candidates before voting day. Where can I cut back on the fluff to make time for political action? I could read fewer novels, go out to lunch with gal pals a little less, watch fewer episodes of the Doctor Who and spend less time trying to wow people with elaborate seminary lessons and elaborate potluck dishes.

Trimming back in these areas would allow me more time to be an informed voter between now and November 8^th. I’m particularly naive about city and state politics right now since I just moved to Indiana.

As I zip up the lunch box, I am thoroughly convinced that things are more interconnected than I usually acknowledge.  I can’t live in one, hermetically sealed box and defiantly question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”  I belong to a complex network of relationships–the body politic.

My social roles over the years—daughter, student, wife, teacher, mother, college administrator, gerontologist–tend to affect how and why I engage. I’ve taken various positions on these three spectra, functioning a bit like depth, breadth and height to form a cube of relationships (local vs global; domestic vs public; and low time investment vs high time investment).  And because I am one person connected to others, we form a fleshy Rubix cube of sorts with infinite possibilities for interconnecting.

Because I see a lot of variability in my own political positions, perspectives, and engagement from year to year, I don’t have a definitive admonition for how to be politically responsible. But during the election season, I’m hyperaware. I’m basically just declaring that we are all political agents.