I was where you were ten years ago...

Saturday night I had a well-attended party thrown for me in Hyde Park. House parties are almost as fun as going door to door. The guests were engaged, knowledgeable and aside from gaining a vote or two I made some new friends. One of the guests was the mayor of a municipality on the other side of the state line. He didn't arrive in time to hear my comments and Q&A session, but we did have a very nice conversation. Of course the number one topic was development incentives. I learned a great deal from him about the pressures involved with retaining and attracting businesses. It was nice to make a contact with someone I hope to collaborate with in the future. Something he said to me struck me so much I'm still mulling it over today. "You're where I was ten years ago." He hasn't exactly sold his soul but he looked at me through the eyes of a man who has been through a decade of serving his city. A decade of deal-making. A decade of outside pressures leading him to make decisions he wasn't exactly comfortable with. Sometimes the ends justify the means? His advice to me was to learn how to work from the inside. "Being the lone dissenting vote does no one any good." Now where have I heard that before? I'm not ready to give up my idealism. I hope I'm never ready. But Saturday night I learned that sometimes in order to serve people for the greater good, you have to learn to bend. Just a little...