Vote with Your Voice

This is a little phrase I coined for myself along the journey.

“Vote with your dollars” is the version I hear so often. And I get it … spend your dollars with people and businesses your are aligned with.

But what happens when you don’t have the dollars to spend?

As has happened to me often enough, being a person with very average means.

And thus arrived the “vote with your voice” concept.

What “Vote with Your Voice” means to me is that we tell people what we want. We speak up about what we like and don’t like.

I don’t do it all the time. Just a little bit here and there.

Here’s an example of how I do it. This one happened recently (fall 2021).

I was in a shoe store. They didn’t carry the minimalist shoes I look for most of the time. But they did carry some brands of shoes I have worn and loved in the past. And they had some of what I call “half-minimalist shoes”.

I really appreciated those half minimalist brands. I’ve worn them in the past. They are an important part of the footwear adventure.

I wasn’t in a position to make a purchase that day. So instead I voted with my voice and asked the shop owner this question:

“Do you have any shoes with all leather soles?”

Why did I ask this question? What was I voting for?

For starters, I want shoes with all leather soles. They are not easy to find. Leather soles disappeared in favor of synthetic materials. It made sense at the time. Because the synthetic soles last a lot longer than leather ones. But no one realized what we were all giving up – that ground connection to the Earth, and a connection to an electrical charge that we now know we need.

So I am on the hunt for shoes with all leather soles, even if they are not minimalist.

She thought about it for a minute, and then asked me:

“Why do you want those?”

Which gave me an opportunity to explain why. I’m not interested in being preachy. I genuinely want shoes with all leather soles and if she brings them into her shop I will 100% purchase them from her.

I told her it was because those shoes would ground me whenever I was on a grounded surface. She had never heard of grounding, but she was very interested.

I gave her a few references for where she could discover more.

She told me she’d be on the look-out for shoes with all leather soles.

I promised her I’d be back to shop. I plan to return in a month or so with my husband in toe. There are shoes in her store that he will like (he’s not as into the minimalist shoe thing as I am).