One of my favorite items to cook in the fall and winter is a ragù, an Italian meat sauce that takes all day to braise. I know I’ve set the heat right when the occasional tiny bubble rises to the surface and pops. On a Sunday, it affords me the chance to catch the Patriots on TV.

And, that sauce is what is on the stove as I write this post. I’ll be putting the ragù into a baked ziti, which I was inspired to make after seeing this Food Wishes video.

Cooking Sunday dinner, going for long bike rides, perusing cooking and fly fishing videos, and watching the Patriots are some options that I choose to do on Sundays. I’m also choosing to read less news these days. It is easy to do, as my VC job and teaching at HBS means that I work Monday to Saturday and luxuriate when Sunday rolls around. So much of the news is horrible these days. I’m not missing much.

Coincidentally, our pastor at Mass today also talked about choices: he said that we always have the power to choose our responses, no matter how bad the news gets.

All this reminds me of the cool video below and about which I wrote previously here. We always have the power to choose our responses.

 

This is a time for choosing. In November, we have the opportunity to vote. We get to choose a candidate. Personally, I don’t believe in separating babies, infants, and children from their parents and caging all of them. I don’t see the logic in trying to take away people’s health care during a pandemic.

I was thinking of all that at Mass today. I don’t think that a certain carpenter from Nazareth would want any of that to happen. As it’s written in Galatians 5:22-23: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”

Lying, exaggerating, encouraging division by race, and putting people in dangerous situations (belittling masks—really?) are not consistent with that. Hey, I get it: fomenting hate, divisiveness, panic, and denial can be a very effective political strategy.

But, at this point, I’m disgusted and will choose accordingly in November. After all, “we are our choices.”