So, when are you going to run for office?

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People ask me, just about daily, when I’m going to run again. My response at first was just one word: never.

I don’t answer that way anymore. Now I respond with six words: “When are you going to run?” They smile and literally back up and say they don’t have any desire to run. That’s a shame. ‘Cause your town, state and country need you.

Let’s face it; we’re in a bit of a jam. I know. I’m a studier. I do my homework.

Let me share a few of the things I learned this week.

First of all, the No. 1, single largest line item in the upcoming budget before the U.S. Congress is the interest we owe on the federal debt. No, not the debt itself, this year’s interest on the debt.

Another thing I learned: We Americans are in the same sort of debt as our country. In fact we had negative personal savings for the first time since we struggled to pull ourselves out of the Great Depression.

I didn’t just study finances.

How about this: All four of Franklin Roosevelt’s son’s served in the military during World War II, while he was president. Roosevelt didn’t believe he could ask other Americans to sacrifice more than he himself was willing to sacrifice.

One of his sons sailed on an escort for British ships during the lend-lease program enabling the British to fight Hitler. The young Roosevelt sailed the Atlantic at a time when German U-boats were taking out three British navy vessels for every new one we could send them. Pretty dangerous work for a president’s son!

I wonder if George W. Bush knows that about Roosevelt’s children. I wonder if his daughters do.

Not everything I learned this week came from a book.

This week I drove through a branch of my bank that I don’t usually use. The woman working the drive-through asked me if I was the Pat LaMarche that ran for governor this year. I said that I was.

But the teller didn’t ask me if I was going to run again. She instead told me that her son had worked on my campaign and that he was a big Pat LaMarche fan. Flattered, I told her to please say hello to him for me. She said that she couldn’t, that her boy had died a few months ago.

I gasped. She looked down. She explained that he had passed away suddenly. She had only very recently returned to work.

I actually already knew that Roosevelt’s kids had gone to war. But I had forgotten and needed to relearn it this week.

And even though I used to know that human suffering is all around us, that lesson too I relearned this week. And I had to ask myself a question I hadn’t thought of in a while. How do grieving people get through their days? How do they triumph over their pain to get anything done?

I mean, think about it. Ever get the wrong change from the teller at a drive-through? Ever wonder if their son had just died?

Maybe you’re reading this and you are one of those people who shuffles through life with more pain than I or anyone else can possibly imagine. Maybe you are someone who knows what this woman feels. Or maybe you’re more like me.

Maybe you’re overworked and underpaid. Of course you are, we live in Maine. And maybe you don’t think you can squeeze one more minute out of your day to do anything else, especially not politics. But you’re wrong.

If you’re like me and you don’t have any idea what sort of ache this woman carries inside her; or what sort of burden an adult child of an Alzheimer’s patient shoulders; or feel the grip of fear holding a parent whose child struggles with cancer; or any of those confinements that inordinately burdened people deal with on a regular day, then you have a little extra time on your hands.

You can run for office.

‘Cause except for those gigantic burdens, you’re not excused from service. It’s not enough to vote. You’ve got to give a damn. I know you’re overwhelmed. I’m overwhelmed too.

If you don’t like what might be happening in your SAD get involved. If you don’t like what you see in Augusta, call your legislator. If you don’t get satisfaction, next year take out papers and run against them. Don’t wait for someone else to do it. You do it.

If you disapprove of the goings on in Washington, D.C., now’s the time to be heard; ’06 is over and the power jockeying has begun for the presidential election. For heaven’s sake, don’t let the decision be made without you. Get on the phone. Every day!

I wanted to send the bank teller who spoke of her son’s idealism a sympathy card. So I looked through the Bangor Daily News and found his obituary. I thought of the irony of his mom who made change for me at the window, and loved her son who struggled to make change happen too.

There are actually two lessons here. One age old one, don’t put off till tomorrow what you want to see done today. And the other, be the change you want to see in the world.

‘Cause if I meet you on the street, I’m going to ask you, “When are you running for office?”

Pat LaMarche was the 2006 Green Independent candidate for governor of Maine.