David McElroy

“You can ignore reality, but you can’t ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.”
— Ayn Rand

I rolled my eyes when my friend told me what had happened in her family. About six months ago, a man related to her had moved in with his own brother’s family. It was just for a couple of weeks, until he got back his feet after a divorce. He had promised to find a job and quickly get a place of his own.

Six months later, the man still has no job. He watches television and plays video games while his brother and sister-in-law go to work. Has he applied for any jobs? Who knows? Nobody with sense believes a word he says. My friend said the brother who’s supporting the man called her this week.

“I don’t know why he’s not working,” the brother said. “He promised he would. I don’t know how to get him to leave.”

My friend and I both felt amazed. The deadbeat has always been a deadbeat. He’s never been responsible enough to keep a job. He married a woman who was willing to believe his lies about changing, but she quickly threw him out when he was lazy and then became verbally abusive, especially when he was drinking.

But for some reason, the deadbeat’s brother is surprised at all this. Why? It’s because we keep expecting people to be something different from what they’ve shown us they really are. As a society and as individuals, we all seem to be deeply in denial when it comes to objective reality.

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I overheard two couples talking today about what a terrible time it is to be bringing children into this world.

“The world’s going to hell in a handbasket,” one of the men said. “You can’t do anything about it and your kids are going to end up rotten and screwed up from the drugs and peer pressure on TikTok and stuff. We wouldn’t have had kids if we’d known it would be this bad.”

The others seemed inclined to agree. For a couple of minutes, they talked about the bad influences that had affected their children — teen-agers, it seemed — from schools and social media.

It wasn’t my conversation, so I didn’t interrupt. I agree with them that the world is messed up. Western culture has become horribly dysfunctional, even though most people are too intimidated to be honest about what they see going on. There are deadly problems facing us everywhere — intellectual, cultural, moral, economic and more. These problems are fire-breathing dragons who threaten us all.

But I kept thinking about some words I read the other day:

“Never feel sorry for raising dragon-slayers in a time when there are actual dragons.”

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When I ran into Brittany tonight, she seemed subdued. She’s normally bubbly and happy, but it was obvious that she was miserable.

There were other people around at first, so I couldn’t ask much about what was doing on. I just leaned over and asked, “Are you OK?” She quietly mouthed, “I’ll tell you later.”

When the place had cleared out, she came and sat with me. Then she explained what her boyfriend had done Saturday. It’s a long story, but he was intentionally cruel and mean to her. He had laughed about it Sunday and taunted her. But when she threatened today to break up with him, he alternated between begging her not to and angrily threatening her if she did.

Brittany acknowledged what we were both thinking. I had warned her about this man after he did something similarly cruel and nasty to her nearly a year ago. I had warned her then to get away from him — because she had discovered who he really is.

But Brittany had given him another chance. And when similar things have happened over the months, she’s done the same thing. She chooses to believe his convenient words of remorse instead of his actions.

People eventually demonstrate who they really are. Always. When people demonstrate what they are — through their actions — believe them. It’s idiocy to pretend that people are going to be something other than what they’ve shown you.

Brittany hasn’t learned that lesson yet. And it’s a lesson that I’ve been really slow to learn, too.

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