It’s tempting to let someone else take over. It’s hard to always be responsible, to be nice, to show up, to get it done. Wouldn’t it be easier if we could just ask someone else to take the reins for a while, go back to a time when we were told when to go to bed, what to eat, what shoes to wear, who to hang out with? Life would be so much simpler.
Children eventually rebel, though. Not many kids would let someone tell them what to do when they figure out they could make their own choices. So they go out and try things, and if they survive, they learn. Then they find out how fricking hard it is to show up to the job, maintain the house, keep the family together . . . and there we go again, ready to let someone else take charge for a while. Not forever, just until we catch our breath, regroup, rest.
Then we find out the people we ceded our authority to aren’t helping us, they are only helping themselves. In fact, they don’t care about us at all! The nerve. We get all indignant, how could they do this, have they no shame, how dare they, yada yada yada. Do we ever stop to remember we chose to turn the keys to the kingdom over to someone who promised we would not lose what we have or that we would not get what we want?
Joke’s on us. Most of us won’t live to see the punchline, but our kids and grandkids will be cleaning up our mess for decades. Then they’ll have their little revolution, throw off the reins, declare their independence from tyranny, congratulate themselves, maybe even tolerate their neighbors for a few halcyon years . . . until one group begins to fear they will lose what they have or not get what they want, and they start pointing fingers at the outgroup and say you can’t have the spoils of our hard-won independence anymore. We want it for ourselves. Go play in the corner.
Not everyone wants to give up their independence, but the ones who do often outnumber the ones who don’t. And so those of us in the margins have no choice but to slink offstage, lick our wounds, and plot our takeover, dreaming of our future glorious triumph.
Free at last! Until the moment we start pointing fingers at whatever other happens to stoke our fear that we are going to lose what we have or not get what we want.
And round and round it goes.