Eat your vegetables. Clean your plate. Exercise. Drink more water. Brush your teeth. Make your bed. Hang up your clothes. Do your homework. Study hard. Get good grades. Go to college. Earn a degree. Don’t smoke. Don’t speed. Don’t drive under the influence. Get a job. Pay your bills. Provide for your family. Be faithful to your spouse. Be kind to others. Be a good neighbor. Mow your yard. Give to charity.
Throughout our lives we’re given instruction on behaviors that are “good for us,” and, by extension, good for our communities. As kids, most of us are controlled to a certain extent by our parents, teachers and other adults who have responsibility for us. Once we reach 18, the responsibility is ours.
I can look at that first paragraph above and basically agree with the wisdom of everything on that list. Did I do all those things without fail? No. Did you? Probably not.
And there are still steps that I skip, although I think my neighbors are finally satisfied with the frequency of my yard mowing. Why won’t I do things that are good for me?
A lot of people are inherently contrary. I don’t like being told what to do. I’m more of a “let’s discuss this and come to a consensus”-type person. My mother and I never came to a consensus on lima beans, but that’s what paper napkins are for.
Others are lazy – or have laissez-faire dispositions. I felt justified in my bed routine when I read that bed mites thrive in beds that are snugly made. And I’ve never forgotten a phrase from my driver’s ed book that means more to me than posted speed limits: “Drive at a safe and reasonable speed for existing conditions.”
Some folks simply don’t trust authority. East Tennessee is a breeding ground for such caution – just look back at our moonshiner ancestors, or at all the former landowners who still hate TVA (and neighbors of the Kingston ash spill who hate TVA). Anyone who grew up with an awareness of Watergate is skeptical of politicians and government – and yet we keep electing con artists, hypocrites and people who don’t have our interests in mind.
As a country, we eat too much (especially foods that are bad for us), drink too many soft drinks, weigh too much, own too much stuff, create too much trash, drive too fast, aren’t kind to others – sometimes not even our families. We take too many shortcuts instead of doing the work that needs to be done. We want everything to be easy. We don’t care about the impact of our behavior on ourselves, much less on others.
You’ve heard me beat this drum before, but this is apparent with the current surge in the coronavirus pandemic. Kids and teachers are getting sick. Hospitals and ICUs are filling up. Events are proceeding hesitantly and with restrictions in place.
Politicians oppose masking because they think that will somehow make them more popular. Anti-vaxxers keep spreading false information because they’ve decided their research makes them more knowledgeable than epidemiologists and practicing physicians.
I’m no authority figure, but I have plenty of smart doctor friends who’ve endorsed vaccination – as well as a sister-in-law who caught Covid-19 before she was able to get a vaccine and still has trouble breathing – and I took the two-dose vaccine as soon as I could.
Problems don’t go away because you wish them to or imagine they will. It takes action to change things. It takes adults to make good decisions.
According to usafacts.org, 61 percent of the U.S. population has had at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccination, and 52 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated. The FDA on Monday gave full approval (not just emergency approval) to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for those 16 and older. It’s time for the rest of the population to step up and be adults. I want to write about something else.
Betsy Pickle is a veteran reporter and editor who occasionally likes to share her opinions with KnoxTNToday readers.