David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

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I can’t get over this terrible feeling that I need to talk to you on video

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Do you ever have a really horrible compulsion that won’t leave you alone?

I’ve had one of those for years now and I can’t make it go away. I also can’t figure out any way that it makes sense, so I hover in this in-between world where something inside me whispers, “You must do this,” and I respond back with a bewildered, “But what would that even mean?!”

Please indulge me here. I need to talk about this, but I don’t know what I want to say. I don’t have a point. I just feel the urgent need to talk with you about this.

I haven’t been interested in acting or any kind of public performance since I was a teen-ager. Back then, I acted in plays. I made speeches. (I won second place in a state speech contest and I’m still angry that I came in second.) Public performance was easy, but I haven’t sought such opportunities for decades.

For the last few years, though, I can’t shake the intense feeling that I need to be making videos to talk to the world — yet I haven’t the slightest clue about the purpose or content. Crazy, right?

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What if world is becoming a place where you no longer want to live?

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Many of my friends are having meltdowns about the increasingly depressing news they see on television and read online. Their social media posts are full of anguish and hurt and anger.

“I’ve been watching CNN and I’m so angry about what’s going on at the border,” writes a friend in a typical post. “Is anyone else feeling this helpless? I was screaming at the TV until I started crying. I don’t know what to do, but something has to change. I’m depressed most of the time lately about what this lunatic is doing to our country. What can we do?!”

Do you really want to know? I’ll tell you, but you’re not going to like the answer.

The best thing you can do for the world — and for yourself — is to disconnect from the “news” and other hyperbolic media. Then you can get busy living your life and making your community what you want it to be. You can focus on your own life and the people around you — things that are within your own control — and you can take your attention away from things you can’t change or control.

If you hate the world in which you live, redefine your world — and create a personal world where it’s healthy and safe to live.

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I fear nobody will come with me as I start down a difficult path

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One of the first lessons we learn in life is to follow the crowd.

Nobody has to tell us this. The cruelty of group dynamics — frequently not examined consciously — pull us and prod us to conform. And because we like the praise of the crowd and fear the crowd’s ridicule, we innocently become sheep — following the herd almost anywhere it goes.

The crowd isn’t very smart or deep. The crowd isn’t very reflective. The crowd follows whatever shiny new thing comes along. For many reasons, following the crowd takes us further and further away from becoming the individuals we were born to be. But because most people are so busy following the crowd — and pursuing the pleasure which the crowd glorifies — they almost never notice this.

I was never a complete crowd-follower. I was proud of being more independent than most. But I eventually realized I was suffocating without meaning. I had accepted too much of what the world — the crowd, really — had given me.

And now that I’ve slowly started asking more and more questions — and finding answers which might as well be unknown tongues to the crowd — I fear that I’m on a path on which nobody I care about will follow.

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