We should all occasionally take a walk through a cemetery. It helps keep things in perspective.

            We live in an age of hyperbole. The best, the worse. The most, the least. The largest, the smallest. The brightest, the dimmest. The highest, the lowest. When we speak in extremes, it should come as no surprise that our penchant for the radical bleeds through to other aspects of our being, for example, our political opinions.

            In expressing our political likes and dislikes, moderation is increasingly taking a back seat to the intemperate.

            In their day, many now considered to be political giants were the targets of such hyperbolic distortions.

            Abraham Lincoln was considered by many — including members of his own cabinet — to be totally unqualified to be president. He was called “The Great Ape.” Walk through an older cemetery, and you’ll find in residence some of the folks who held that view. History has come to a different conclusion.

            To some, Franklin Roosevelt is the political giant who brought the country through the Great Depression. To others, he is a traitor to his class who put the country on the path to a socialist nanny-state. Take your pick. In the solitude of the graveyard, you will find proponents of all sides of the argument.

            The current occupant of the White House has been called the most incompetent president we have ever had. Seems a bit drastic an assessment, especially given the fact his tenure is not even concluded. Rest assured, however, in time, there will be sufficient resting places to accommodate both critics, and supporters.

            As the curtain comes up on 2016, we are faced with the spectacle of an election that will decide not only who will be the next president of the United States, but also the 435 members of the House of Representatives and roughly one-third of the 100 members of the Senate.

            Some have pointed out that this is serious business, which indeed it is, although a little levity from time to time helps maintain one’s sanity. Lighten up, buttercup. There is room for both.

            All indications are that it’s going to be a rough ride — made even more so by the sparsity of common ground between the contending points of view.

            On the one hand, it’s all the fault of an overreaching executive who refuses to compromise. On the other, it’s a do-nothing Congress whose majority has made a conscious decision to sabotage any proposal coming from the executive they consider almost a usurper.

            On these diametrically opposed bare bones will likely be hung campaigns of charge and counter-charge, harangue and bluster, alarms and calls to the barricades, vilification and exaggeration. Calm discussion displaced by unreasoning verbal hysteria.

                        The political divisions already so evident in our society could become further exacerbated as all sides try to drown out the others, hearing, but not listening. Talking, but not communicating.

            Occasionally take a walk through a cemetery. It helps keep things in perspective.

            Whatever our present passions and apparent lack of common ground, we all have a common final destination. Those who are already there had the same life-and-death passions, although the sound and fury of their days are, at most, only faint echoes in our own.

            In a relatively few years, wherever we find ourselves politically today will become irrelevant — for us personally at least.

            Whether we like it or not, we are on a journey together. It is depressing to think we must spend all our time at each other’s throats. Perhaps we need a little detente. Perhaps we should cut each other some slack. Perhaps while I disagree with your position fundamentally, I should respect your fundamental right to hold it. Perhaps you might reciprocate.

            We can argue our points, but we should keep in mind there is more that unites us as Americans than that which divides us into warring ideological tribes.

            Perhaps by turning down the heat, we can make more reasoned decisions. Perhaps if the candidates find their histrionics falling on deaf ears, they might rethink their strategies and figure out that if they want our vote, they had better treat members of the electorate as sentient adults and not emotional, and pliable, two-year-olds.

            Ironically, what is often taken as a description of unbridgeable division is actually a statement of the ultimate commonality we hold. As Rudyard Kipling put it, “East is east, and west is west and never the twain shall meet.” We rarely remember the rest of the line: “Till earth and sky stand presently at God’s great judgement seat.”

            In Kipling’s poem, there is a final coming together, a mutual respect, even between an English military officer and an Afghan horse thief. If mutual respect between such disparate human beings is possible in a poem, perhaps there is hope we can find it in our real lives.

            Have a nice election, Americans, and the best of luck to us all.

            In the meantime, occasionally take a walk through a cemetery,

            It helps keep things in perspective.