Last night, I was forced to take a walk without my ear buds. I know, I know. It was tough but I made it through. But, instead of my head swirling with jazz riffs and me mentally playing along, my mind started to wander. As it did, I began to imagine the scenario of a cop coming up to me and asking what I was doing walking that late (I was wearing all dark clothes so this seemed feasible). Then, something occurred to me – I want the freedom to walk down my street (in a not-so pedestrian friendly area) and not be bothered by a police officer but, if someone was walking by my house in the middle of the night, I would want a cop to know what they were up to (whether it was harmless or not). So what is it that I really want? To not be bothered or to know that an instance of me being inconvenienced means that someone that IS up to no good may be detoured by the possibility that they will be confronted? It was then that it occurred to me that we really don’t want a lot of the things we think we do.
We want freedom and not to be bothered when we are minding our own business but we want security. We want jobs to stay in the U.S. but we want to maintain our wages and not compromise our lifestyle. We want our food and service to be just right but we don’t want the manager of the restaurant to bother us or fill out that silly card on the table. We want to be fit but we don’t intend on putting down that soda. We want the guy that runs the red light to get a ticket but we don’t want those cameras taking our pictures.
What we really want is to have things our own way; for people to read our minds. Then, however, we would hate the fact that people could see our thoughts.
We want rules to keep everybody in line but we don’t want the enforcing of those rules to touch us. Believe me, I am not excluding myself from this. While typing the second paragraph, I was drinking a Pepsi. Sad, but true. I think, though, that if we keep this in mind, we may just become a little more understanding towards some of these social malfunctions.
