Priorities

When I drop my kid off at school, the crossing guard urges me to not linger and to keep moving. The crossing guard doesn’t know if my seat belt is on or if I like to watch as my kids go into the building. The crossing guard is focused on moving the masses. My priority is different. I am concerned about my kids, myself, and then everyone else.

We saw this with the pandemic and we see it all the time in our culture. The crossroads of making decisions for what is good for the commons and what is best for me. I’ll add another layer to what is best for the future. Because the decisions we make today are making an impact on those who are not even born yet.

The culture works better when we work together, and at the same time, we are forced to take care of ourselves. For thousands of years, we lived in tribes. We lived in a small, tight nit community where it was easy to see the decisions affect your neighbors. We don’t live in that type of world anymore. If you drop a piece of trash, no one will notice. Amplifying this feeling of isolation that none of the decisions I make matter.

The reason why it is so difficult to make these decisions is because of the priorities we have made in our culture—efficiency, reliability, predictability, and profits. But if we valued resiliency, creativity, and equality the decisions we make would look different.