July 20th, 2009

RELYING ON OTHERS

Everyone in your life; family, friends, co-workers, bosses, spouses, loved ones and everyone in between will eventually disappoint you. This, I have come to learn, is one of the indisputable laws of human existence.

In some cases, the disappointments will be relatively minor; perhaps you will be habitually prompt and someone that matters to you will consistently never arrive on time, thus causing you constant anxiety and resentment.

 In other cases, the disappointment will be un-intentional yet still hurtful; perhaps someone will promise to do something with every intention of following through, yet they will fail to do so. While their goal was not to inconvenience or infuriate you, the affect on you will still be the same.

Then of course there are the most insidious examples; those people who knowingly and willingly betray you and your trust and outright hurt you.

Regardless of the motivation or depth of the disappointments, they will occur. For some of us, they will also seem to be never ending. Type-A perfectionists like me learn early in life that we have two outlooks before us; either accept that most people cannot live up to our standards of achievement or accept that we aren’t nearly as perfect as we’d like to believe we are and therefore need to cut people a lot of slack and expect less of them and ourselves. Either way, the end result is simple; we must either find a way to live with perceived imperfections and shortcomings in others or we must be very, very, alone.

We’ve all seen the scenario play out in our lives and the lives of others in countless ways; the most common example is in intimate relationships when one person clearly has life figured out on a much higher level than the other and the latter of the two is an obvious drag on the other person. We’ve all had friends stay with “drama queens” and “losers” far longer than they should hoping and praying that they will be able to change the other person and teach him or her to become better at life. Alas, it never works that way.

I resigned myself a long time ago to a very simple formula; rely on no one; for anything.

The biggest mistake people make in life, in my opinion, is looking to others to provide them happiness, contentment and fulfillment. Again, we see this all of the time in intimate personal relationships. How many times have we all heard blushing brides proclaim their love for their husbands because he “makes me happy,” or he “completes me.”  Barf.

The problem with relying on others for the positive things available to you in life is that when you place that power in the hands of others, they have the ability (either intentionally or not) to take it away from you. I have never understood why anyone would allow any other person to have that kind of control over their own happiness. In our individual, personal relationships it really boils down to how you are willing to allow yourself to be treated. How much, how often and from who will you accept less from? In many cases, the person’s better qualities outweigh their imperfections and you learn to have a friend that is really bad at a few things but is so good in other areas, that the friendship is a net positive. So be it. Making personal relationship choices such as these are part of living amongst a culture. In a best case scenario, we learn along the way to not allow the people in our lives to make us feel anything we don’t want to feel. We learn to control our own choices, emotions and destiny.

America is far from a best case scenario these days. Few of us practice the “I am responsible for my own happiness” approach to our individual lives and it is now so pervasive that we have become a nation that relies on others for everything. I am not talking about the litany of people in our lives I listed at the beginning of this article, I am talking about strangers; total strangers.

As the debate in this country heats up over our health care system and how we will allow the most people access to the most care, a very disturbing and consistent refrain is beginning to emerge; more and more Americans feel that it is “right” and “fair” that healthier Americans pay for the care of the unhealthy.

I’m sorry, did you just vomit in your own mouth? Allow me to repeat that… more and more Americans feel that it is “right” and “fair” that healthier Americans pay for the care of the unhealthy.

The idea is simple in its stupidity; despite all of the fear mongering and rhetoric you’re already hearing the fact is this: the most under-insured people in America are young adults. This is for a variety of reasons, of course. Some are in college, some refuse to pay into employer-related benefits, some are just starting out at jobs that don’t offer medical benefits packages and most…perish the thought…choose to carry no health insurance because they are…wait for it…young and healthy and therefore feel they don’t need the coverage. Alas, this is unacceptable in America that someone would take advantage of their healthiness! So, more and more amongst us are calling for a legal mandate forcing young healthy people to pay for healthcare they will not use or need so that more money floods into the system and allows us to pay for unhealthier Americans who need extra care.

This should come as no surprise to anyone who really takes a moment to stop and think. For decades we have built this nation’s prosperity on the backs of the most successful amongst us. The more money you make in America, the more of it you have confiscated by the government so that they can redistribute your wealth to people who “need it more.”

Logic dictates in a country willing to accept the best and brightest in our businesses paying for the laziest and least competent that we will and must also accept the healthiest amongst us paying for the least healthy and slovenly.

I will be fascinated to watch the debate as it unfolds. For all of these years so many people have told us that the rich and successful are evil and greedy and deserve to have their hard earned fortunes taken from them and given to people who have done nothing to earn it. I wonder how many of those same people screaming for social equality will feel now about spending 5 days per week in the gym, eating well, taking vitamins and being a pillar of health and then being told they must pay twice as much money for half as much care so that some fat-ass who has smoked for 40 years can get the best care available?

The problem with class warfare is that everyone has something worth taking. While attacking the rich and successful is an easy way to start the game, (since by definition there will always be fewer people amongst the masses who are the richest), it is far from where it ends. Everyone has something that can be justifiably redistributed to others because when you allow a mindset such as relying on others to creep into a culture you demand that everyone be the same. No winners, no losers, no disappointment, no happiness. We are today a step closer to becoming Denmark, the nation that for the past decade has had the highest level of reported contentment on the planet. It is a country where everyone relies on everyone else for everything. They give 90% of everything they make to their almighty government, who then redistributes it equally and fairly to everyone in the exact same manner. It is a virtual utopia; a Heaven on Earth. No one wakes up with any sort of drive, ambition or desire and no one goes to sleep with any sort of sadness, longing or fear. There is no failure to fear because there is no success to be achieved. They have become the happiest automatons on Earth; connected together by their reliance on everything except themselves for everything.

And guess what? Even an automaton will disappoint you.