It’s been a tough week. It’s been both busy and confusing, with near-constant frustration and substantial positive reinforcement coming in a constant stream from unexpected angles. I don’t want to get into the details, but the level of cognitive dissonance in my life is at times deafening. I hardly know what to think. It’s hard at times just to parse all the mixed messages.
As we were headed to the gym on Tuesday night, Hannah asked me what was going on. She’s a perceptive twelve-year-old and a straight-A student. I told her that I was frustrated, that it seems like people--even people whom I respect a great deal--have shown themselves to be fundamentally self-interested, and that their willingness to tie themselves into knots intellectually in order to believe what’s in their own basic self-interest has been both overwhelming and disheartening. I tried to explain to her that we have a higher calling, that the fact that she IS a straight-A student and has every advantage gives her a responsibility going forward. She was not put on this Earth just to be a mother and a veterinarian, if that’s the path that she chooses. Self-interest and the interests of her family will always be important, yes, but those things will never be as important as her responsibility to society, to her community as a whole. There is such a thing as service, and though it’s up to each of us to define our own service for ourselves, service just to oneself and one’s family doesn’t actually get us anywhere. Service to one’s self and family is a truly minimal kind of social responsibility.
Hannah gets it, I think, but I don’t know who else does. I don’t know who else is teaching this lesson to their kids.
As a society, we’ve made greed a virtue. College kids look at a film like The Wolf of Wall Street and they see a role model, not a cautionary tale. We’re all going to be stuck with the consequences of this in time. These consequences might take a while manifest, but their manifestation will be a real thing. We will all notice. We will all live with the consequences.
How much any of this influences my own cognitive dissonance is an open question. It feels like I’m a hero when people need a hero, and I’m a goat when they need someone to blame or have another hero picked out already. Meanwhile, I’m always me; I’m the same guy. I do what I do, and it’s flattering when people notice, and it’s frustrating when they cut me off before giving me so much as a chance to show my strengths. This is true for everyone, I’m sure, but it’s been really, repeatedly unmistakable these past weeks for me. As my father used to say, “What you see depends on where you sit.” It’s weird, though, to be the object of that saying, to have people project whatever they need onto me.
At the end of the day, I have a beautiful wife, two great kids, and a house that I can afford. I don’t exactly need other people’s approval. Still, the mixed messages are hard to hear in rapid succession, and at times that makes my personal reality a bit unpredictable.
