David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

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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Why do people who say they love each other cause mutual harm?

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When I came out of my front door with Lucy a few moments ago for a walk, I saw a car coming down the street, so we waited for it to pass. Instead, it stopped at a house across the street.

As Lucy and I stepped into the street to start our walk, the doors of the car sprang open — and the angry screaming of a man and woman hit us full force.

I haven’t heard this sort of angry confrontation in years. The vicious words and repeated profanity seemed even more jarring because the street was otherwise quiet and still and beautiful in the warm night air.

He kept calling her a “hoe” and said whatever she had allegedly done was the same thing she had done to someone else. She screamed right back at him. He was throwing her belonging out of the car into the street and yard — as he kept hurling vicious insults and profane words.

As Lucy and I walked in the other direction, I kept asking myself, “Why do we humans have to keep hurting each other like this?”

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Nature’s renewal and growth boost my hope for my own life each year

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Four months ago, this leaf didn’t exist. The tree in my back yard on which it grows looked dead. There were no signs of life there. But this evening, it’s vibrant and lush — green and beautiful and full of life.

For many generations, human beings were directly connected to the cycles of nature. Their lives changed depending on the season. Their understanding of the seasons was crucial to their survival. They learned to plant in the spring, work fields in the summer, to harvest in the fall, and to protect themselves in the winter.

Modern humans are shielded from the cycles of nature. We have temperature-controlled homes and offices. We have pretty much the same food year-round, even if we don’t quite understand how that happens. My life in the summer isn’t much different from my life in the winter. Yours probably isn’t much different, either.

Reconnecting with the cycles of nature — and understanding what they teach me about myself and about this life — has been one of the most important parts of the last decade or so for me. And watching this leaf and all the other growing greenery in my back yard has me thinking this evening about that lesson once more.

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