This is that moment

Remember that moment in high school when the violent, stupid bully from grade school suddenly had cronies, guns, money from illicit sources and the power to make everyone’s lives dangerous and miserable? This is that.

We are those teenagers waiting until the last minute to dash to class so we don’t get cornered in the hallway. We are the kid who doesn’t raise his hand in class because he might get beat up later. So now we have a choice to make. We can acquiesce. We can go to the parties, take the drugs, hang out with the popular kids and stay on everybody’s good side, thereby potentially ruining our own chances for an education, decent work, freedom from poverty, oppression, addiction, incarceration, or some kind of serious accident OR we can resist. Resistance is hard. It may put us in danger. We might not be popular. It’s hard to see how those choices make a difference, why it’s worth it to play the long game. It’s called maturity.

This is what mature people do.

a. They work to find other people who want to celebrate the things that make them happy together such as music, literature, art, movies, hiking, etc.,

b. They expand their intellectual capacity by learning about history, the natural world, psychology, other places and cultures

c. They expand their physical capacities by playing hard, acquiring and practicing a skill, living and eating for personal and planetary health

d. They combine their relationships, their passions, their skills, and their intellect to ask questions, explore values, identify goals, and put mechanisms into place to achieve them.

e. They refuse the bully.