It often doesn’t matter who’s right; just fix the problem and move on

By David McElroy · February 18, 2018

My dogs and cats have taught me a lot of things over the years, though I’m sometimes slow to learn. Lucy taught me something this weekend — and I now feel foolish to realize she had to teach me something that should have been obvious.

Lucy hates vacuum cleaners. This is common with a lot of dogs and cats, but her fear is the worst I’ve ever seen. She seems to think her life is in danger and she goes into a terrible panic.

You might remember that when she came to live with me two years ago, I was told that she would always be a “special needs dog,” because she was terrified of the world. She’s made so much progress that I almost never see that side of her anymore — but the vacuum cleaner still brings it out.

I can be stubborn, for reasons that have to do with both personality and training, and I’ve been stubborn about the vacuum cleaner. I’ve said all this time that she had to get accustomed to this device eventually, so I’ve not kept her away from it.

Saturday, I brought the vacuum cleaner into my bedroom and Lucy came with me. She eyed the device warily, but she doesn’t run until it’s turned on, so she stayed at first. But then I plugged it in and flipped the power on.

I was cleaning near the door to the room and there was no path for her to run except coming right next to this terrifying machine. I could tell that she was in a state of full panic and didn’t know what to do. She was scared, but I was determined that she eventually get accustomed to the sound, so I just kept working.

She jumped up onto the bed in an attempt to escape, but still the loud machine got closer. She cowered in terror. Then, in the midst of her fears, she urinated on the bed.

I looked over at her doing this and I was enraged. I switched the vacuum cleaner off and started yelling at her. I chased her out of the bedroom — for fear she might do more. I let my anger get the best of me and I just screamed at her, which didn’t help. (If you know me, you know how rare it is for me to become angry or raise my voice.)

Now Lucy was confused. Her only human — the one who she has relied on for two years to take care of her and love her unconditionally — was yelling at her. I’m sure she had no idea why.

Later, I moved the vacuum cleaner to an area near where her food and water bowls stay. I didn’t put it there intentionally at first, but then I thought maybe it would be good if she had to get past that hated machine to get to her food and water.

For the next 24 hours, she avoided her food and water bowls as much as possible, because that terrible machine that caused her so much fear was still there.

Late Sunday afternoon — when it was time to feed her — I finally listened to her. She obviously didn’t say anything in words, but as I put her food out and looked into her eyes, I suddenly realized how wrong I’ve been.

You see, I’ve been right in believing she needs to get over her fear of the vacuum cleaner. It won’t hurt her. She has to live in a house with such a machine (even if I don’t use it often enough). All of that is reasonable.

But here’s the thing. When I looked into her eyes as I put her food out Sunday afternoon, I suddenly realized that it didn’t matter. She was still scared. She was going to continue to be scared. And my stubbornness was all about my selfish need to be in control — about something that would never matter.

I moved the vacuum cleaner far away from her bowls and she happily went to eat dinner. The fear was gone, because I was no longer trying to force her to do something she was too terrified to do.

Here’s what I realized in that moment. There are all sorts of situations in our lives when we are right about something, but when it doesn’t matter to prove we’re right or to force others to obey what we want them to do.

There are all sorts of times in our lives when people need us to simply move the vacuum cleaner — instead of explaining to them why they shouldn’t be afraid of the vacuum cleaner.

That’s true with animals. It’s true for children. It’s true for people with work with. It’s true for the partners we claim to love.

I’m ashamed now that I didn’t simply accommodate Lucy’s fears about the vacuum cleaner before now. It’s obvious she’s always going to be scared of the device. Why didn’t I simply respect her fears by making sure she was out of the room before I started something that was going to scare her? It was about my egotistical need to be right and in control. I was wrong.

There are things you’re scared of that don’t scare me. There are other things that terrify me which you would find silly to be afraid of. If we love people and respect people — or animals — we will honor others’ fears instead of trying to show how our approach is right and how their attitudes are wrong.

Trying to force other people to do things our way isn’t about love or respect. It’s about control. There are some times in life when we have legitimate reasons to force people to obey certain rules — which is why we don’t let children or animals play in roads — but there are plenty of other times when our attempt to teach is really just a thinly disguised effort to control others.

I appreciate my Lucy teaching me this lesson. I’m sorry I’m sometimes slow to listen to those I love.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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