David McElroy

Have you ever wanted something so badly that you’d do almost anything to achieve it? Have you ever been so close to such a thing that you could taste it?

When I was about 30 years old, I wanted to be a successful newspaper publisher for a large company. I wanted to be the “wunderkind” who people in the company whispered about — the one who everybody expects to be running the company soon.

A big newspaper chain hired me. I entered the company’s three-year publisher training program, but I was deemed ready to run a newspaper after just 10 months. I was promoted to be the editor and publisher of a small newspaper that published three times a week.

I was on top of the world. I was going to amaze everybody with what I could do. I was going to publish a high-quality newspaper for the people of the town and make money for the owners of my company. My employees were going to love me. We were going to do great things together. I was going to be on the fast track to running the company one day.

Just a year later, I quietly resigned and left town. I felt like a failure. Very little went right for me. I didn’t get along with the regional vice president who supervised my area. We fought over everything. My staff didn’t especially like me. I had to fire several people.

Mostly, though, I simply didn’t fit. I was an outsider who didn’t belong in this place. The people of the town didn’t like me — and I didn’t like them.

I woke up in the middle of the night last night with this failure on my mind — and I suddenly realized that I never had a chance.

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Super Bowl Sunday has become something of a national holiday in the U.S. According to surveys, somewhere around 75 percent of Americans say they’ll watch at least part of the game.

Here’s the thing, though. The vast majority of those people don’t really care who wins the game, so why are they watching?

Some say it’s for the ads. Some have other excuses. For most, though, it’s simply because that’s what everyone else is doing. It’s become expected. Many people will turn the game on — for at least part of it — and many of those people will be watching at “Super Bowl parties.” Why? Because that’s what they’re expected to do.

I honestly don’t care whether you watch this game or not. I don’t care whether you want to see the ads or not. (The ads mostly seem terrible to me these days, but that’s another issue.) I’m concerned about something else.

I’m terrified that such a huge percentage of people are on social auto-pilot — simply doing something because their culture dictates that it has become “normal.”

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I was feeling pretty self-righteous. Someone had just informed me that he was breaking a contract he had signed. It made me angry, because it was going to embarrass me with other people involved in the deal.

Even worse — from my point of view — is that it was going to cost me thousands of dollars. I had worked to bring about this agreement and now one of the parties was walking away from what he had firmly agreed to do.

“Why would someone agree to do something and then suddenly announce he wasn’t going to keep his word?” I complained to myself.

For a few hours, I burned with self-righteous anger. I was a victim. This other person was terrible. I would never do something like this.

And then it hit me. I really would do something like this. In fact, I had already done something far worse about 15 years ago. I was forced to confront my ridiculous double-standards.

I was being a hypocrite. Again.

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