There is some debate online about whether I am political or not, and if so, what kind of political person am I.  I  don’t put labels on myself, so I can’t really answer the question. I suppose I’ve chosen the politics of good, a self-serving label of its own, but still, it’s the truth. It doesn’t mean I am good, or that I am better than anyone else.

It doesn’t even mean I am doing good. It’s just what I chose. I got a new hat in the mail today, it says “Do Good,” and I like this hat very much, it sums up my political philosophy perfectly and succinctly. I was flattered to get it. In the last few years, a new experience for me: I know just who I am and where I am going.

That follows long decades of stumbling and bumbling and crashing around, a bit like Frankenstein after he escapes from the tower.

After the November 16 election, I remember thinking there is a vacuum in the souls of many men. I saw these warring political figures, the left and the right, the advocates and panelists, the trolls and establishment wise men, and I knew I didn’t want that.

I saw the raging arguments that never ended and could never be won or lost because no one was actually listening, political arguments are all about talking. We seem to have forgotten how to hear one another beyond our labels, the End Of Listening Is A Great Loss.

I heard my friends lamenting and worrying, sometimes with good reason, sometimes not. I didn’t want to spend the next four years like that, either being angry or afraid. I had this idea that it was better to do good than argue about what good is.

I  remember just what I was thinking on November 17.

I don’t want to be arguing with people for the next four years. I don’t want to be hating people.

I don’t want to be checking the news all day. I don’t wish to belong to the left or the right, I did not want to wake up and go to sleep angry. I didn’t have the faintest idea I would be doing what i am doing now, I have long ago given up the fantasy that I am in control of my own life.

So I knew what I didn’t want to do, but I  wasn’t really sure what I did want to do.

In the last few years, I had toyed with using my blog, which had grown dramatically in  readership in recent years, for some good. I raised money for the legal expenses for Joshua Rockwood, a farmer who had been accused (quite falsely) of animal cruelty by overzealous police officers and animal rights activists. I raised money to help the horses of Blue Star Equiculture, a draft horse rescue farm in Palmer, Mass. When our farrier Ken Norman needed two knee replacements, we raised money to help tide him over during his long and painful recovery period.

People wanted to help. People did help.

I found that many people wanted to dog good, but didn’t know how. They were wary of non-profits asking for money they received but did not really share, even when they did good work, and many did, we didn’t quite see it. I saw the radically democratic charity of crowdsourcing, which put the power of donations right back in the hands of ordinary people. Suddenly, they could give what they wished to people they wanted to support.

The blog raised awareness of the plight of the New York Carriage Horses, and may have played a small role in turning back the efforts in New York City to ban the horses. The blog now has more than four million hits a year, and I was surprised at its national reach, and also by the generosity of many of my readers. They trusted me, which was profoundly flattering, and we made a powerful connection together, we called it the Army Of Good.

And it was very simple. I look for small acts of great kindness, and people donated if they liked in amounts that they choose. I posted  stories and photos of the people we were helping so people could see where their money was going. And it worked, beyond my expectations.

I can no longer count the people we have helped or the good deeds we have tonight. Tonight, I ordered four pairs of summer pajamas for two Mansion residents who are warm at night, wrapped in heavy winter pajamas. They will be here Monday. Small acts of great kindness.

So what if I just tried  to do good, I thought? It sounds strange, even sappy for me.

I was a writer, an author, a blogger and photographer, not a do-gooder. I had been a journalist for two decades, with all of the cynicism and wariness that comes with being a reporter.

I was aware of two distinct but in some ways similar groups of people in need. I was already a volunteer at the Mansion Assisted Care Facility, and saw how much help those people needed.

I was eager to make contact with new refugees to America, I knew they were also  in great need of great  help as they found themselves in a new kind of America, where they were often a source of bitter controversy.

So we  started doing good and have just kept it up. Clothes, outings, apartment deposits, boat rides, books, air conditioners, pajamas, room fans, reclining chairs, soap and toiletries – the Mansion residents and the refugees often need the same things, they both have had Wish Lists we generously supported..

This doesn’t make me a saint, one of the big lessons I have learned is that you don’t have to be a saint to do good, you just have to want to do good. So I am happy to wear this hat this summer. Doing good has helped keep empathy and compassion alive for me, and made me a better human. What a gift that is.

So that, I guess, is my politics, doing good. I don’t ask the Mansion residents or refugees if they are on the left or the right. They are people, just like me. I could so easily have been anyone of them.

It must be a good thing, I have a hat. And it does feel good.