Marriage, Death, COVID, and Politics
Self-interest doesn’t run the world … yet
I finally caught COVID. My whole family did. We managed to avoid it for two-and-a-half years, but this last excursion did us in.
I knew it was going to be a crazy trip because we had to travel so far (from one coast to the other and back again) in such a short time (five days) with a wedding in the middle. And not just any wedding, my sister-in-law’s wedding at my mother- and father-in-law’s house, so we knew we would be helping out rather than enjoying a little vacation. And, once we arrived, we also found out that my husband’s uncle was coming home to begin hospice care the same weekend, so we would get the chance to see him and say goodbye before he passed. Emotions were running high for everyone, for many reasons. Plus, my sister-in-law and her family caught COVID just two weeks before the wedding, so everyone was on edge about catching or spreading it.
Despite so much going on in such a short time, I got to observe some important things about people right now. Most striking to me was that some people really seemed to make all the events about themselves.
People had opinions about the bride and groom. In an angry display of passive aggression, some people chose not to attend the ceremony at all, although their children happily attended.
Other people had opinions about visiting my husband’s dying uncle. “I don’t want to see him like that,” a relative’s wife said. Wow. No one even asked. And really, how is someone else’s death, a non-relative whom you have barely even met, about how you feel?
And people still had opinions about masks. Another uncle and his wife chose not to wear masks around his own dying brother, despite everyone else wearing them and having just been to a large wedding where, it turns out, lots of people actually caught COVID. Although, maybe a mask isn’t going to help when your head is so far up your own rear end.
Is this you? Are you compelled to make everything somehow about yourself? Then I have a new strategy for you to try, and boy is it liberating. Here’s how it works. Every time you feel the need to grace other people with your personal opinion (or beat them over the head with it), take a moment and ask yourself: who cares? If the honest answer is no one but me, keep it to yourself. Let me give you a few examples:
- Does wearing a mask feel like a political statement to you? Who cares? Are germs and illness political? If you wear a mask, does that mean you’ve been “owned” by “the libs”? You have to be exceptionally self-centered for this argument to make sense, as wearing masks for medical reasons has been a thing for much longer than COVID, and absolutely none of it has been about you, ever. Like, at all.
- Does using people’s preferred pronouns get you down? Who cares? You have the right not to use them at all, just like the people you are speaking to have the right to call you an a**hole. Honestly, why do you care how people identify themselves and what people want to be called? How does it impact you in any way other than asking you to use your brain for a few milliseconds? Do you also give people a hard time when they ask you to use their names? Right, I forgot this is all so difficult and unfair for you.
- Are you angry that people disagree with your opinions? Who cares? Unless “people” actually means “government,” everyone can react to your beliefs however they (legally) see fit. Moreover, if your viewpoint is intolerant of others, how can you insist on tolerance for yourself with a straight face? Out here in the private sector, no one has to agree with you or give you a platform, not even the big tech monopolies, because free speech is for all of us, not just you. (Side note: if you dislike the big tech monopolies but enjoy our current state of capitalism, you have some internal disagreement to resolve before worrying about anyone else.)
- Do you demand representation in every single space you encounter? Who cares? What’s the goal here, ultimate homogeneity that looks and sounds just like you? A shared narrative so tightly controlled that it says nothing in the end? Should everything be reduced to the lowest common denominator? Dislike or disagree with the product all you want, but stop trying to bend it to your will. Not everything can (or should) be about you.
- Do you believe that your personal discomfort is more important than other people’s freedom? Who f*cking cares? Your discomfort is no one’s problem but yours. I guarantee people are going to say and do things you disagree with. But they have the freedom to do so, as long as those words/behaviors don’t infringe on anyone else’s rights, and you will simply have to find ways to deal with your feelings about it. If you want the government to limit people’s freedom in order to do that, maybe see a therapist about your control issues.
This selfishness, it’s like a disease. When we behave selfishly in social situations, it catches on. A pattern of giving in to our base instincts and desires again and again will ultimately make it impossible to live in a community, let alone a country, with others. It’s also a non-partisan issue, although I admit the first two examples I used skew Republican. (In my defense, where my husband is from, upstate New York, it’s a pretty conservative place, so those examples were right at the top of my head.)
In reality, however, all of us do these things. We leave our grocery carts in the parking lot like loose cows waiting to be rounded up because we simply can’t be bothered to put them back. We drive right past pedestrians, even parents with young children, because we’re just too busy and important to stop. We want the city to do something about that transient encampment already, not because we care for those who are living in it, but because we detest the inconvenience it causes us.
We care more about ourselves and our personal well-being than that of others, even if at some level we know (even if it’s waaaaay deep, deep down for some of us) that other people’s suffering could be our own suffering under even slightly different circumstances. And we vote like it, too.
Will I ever be able to convince people to think and act less selfishly? Probably not. But maybe, instead of trying to override our selfish tendencies, I could re-frame them and lean into them.
Here’s a thought: That little voice inside your head telling you “it could happen to you” is right. And if that’s true, a really selfish individual should want the government to see and treat each of us as equals, instead of asking the government to take sides in our petty squabbles. Each time we use the government to legislate morality instead of protecting people’s rights, we are putting ourselves at risk for a future when those in charge no longer agree with us.
So please, do the selfish thing: Vote for a free society where everyone is allowed to express themselves. Because once the government has an opinion, yours won’t matter anymore.
If you would like to see what else I have to say about opinions and politics, check out this article:
