American culture, American Politics, Life, pop culture, Society, Society & Culture, Uncategorized

One of These Days

There are no words, really, though I’ll type a thousand as therapy.

I’ve been staring at that picture of the tree above, with its old, bulky roots, for a few days, as the violence that has once again rocked America has once again led to a chorus of outcry for change. Perhaps what we need is a change in mindset to remember our roots as human beings.

As President John F. Kennedy once said, “For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”

That mortal part, we do not seem to value it enough.

One of these days, we’re going to wake up, I think.

One of these days, we’re going to realize we’re killing each other over senseless anger, I think.

One of these days, a friend will call and simply ask how it’s going, I think.

One of these days, the headlines won’t be filled with both the tragic and the trivial, I think.

I think I might be wrong.

One of these days, we’re going to reap it.

One of these days, someone with their finger on a very important button will go too far.

One of these days, we’ll just stop responding to texts and calls.

One of these days, we’ll just give up.

I hope I am wrong.

Yes, Black Lives Matter. And white lives matter. Asian lives matter. Christian lives matter. Muslim lives matter. Young lives matter. Old lives matter. American lives matter. Russian lives matter. Iraqi lives matter. Women’s lives matter. Men’s lives matter.

Our short-sighted solution to respond to an event by pulling into tighter, highly defined groups of ethnicity, race, gender or religion isn’t working. We’re dividing ourselves further and playing into the devil’s hand of hate.

In 1963, most of the world watched in astonishment as President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Last night, nearly 53 years later, mere blocks from Dealey Plaza where Kennedy was assassinated, five Dallas police officers were assassinated by snipers, on the heels of two men shot to death by police in Minnesota and Louisiana.

We’re regressing, America.

We can argue about guns and who can have them, or if it makes sense to allow military grade weapons available to civilians all day long. We can get snarky about deleted e-mails or business ethics of presidential candidates for months. But that’s not the division that ails us.

Simply put: how do we legislate kindness, compassion – or the simple ability to leave each other alone?

On Monday, the United States celebrated its 240th birthday. As majestic fireworks filled the sky, I doubt I was alone in pondering the sheer awe of time that had passed since those responsible for declaring our independence had put ink to their cause.

I also wondered how long we have left, how much has changed since the late 1700s in the world and how one of the greatest things about being American is not only freedom, but feeling relatively safe in our everyday lives.

We are no longer safe. And if we are no longer safe, we are no longer free.

When guns are fired from downtown skyscraper parking garages (Dallas) or from interstate overpasses (Washington, D.C. many years ago), when people are shot in their cars reaching for their wallets (Louisiana) you start questioning your safety nearly all the time.

All this does is serve to separate us more. We pull back into our homes, our neighborhoods and stay out of the cities and protests. Freedom to assemble shouldn’t have to come from the fear of being shot.

The song remains the same. We’re dividing ourselves.

Technology and social media have put a wedge in our society. We might be perhaps more disconnected that we were hundreds of years ago, when there were far fewer of us and our homes were miles apart.

We all have a voice and opinion and want to be heard.

The problem is, no one is saying anything worth hearing.

We market ourselves in blur of posts and pictures. If the intent was to be connected with people we don’t see as much anymore, maybe that was an itch we didn’t need to scratch if this is all we plan to do with it. If we wanted to see and talk to all those old friends and family more, would distance matter? We could still pick up a phone and catch up.

We’re a nation of creepers on social media, as if a picture of smiles and 140 characters of text tell the whole story. No one is perfect. But we pretend to be, and we’d prefer to take swipes at other people – their errors and mistakes – by calling them out on social media.

We’re jealous and envious of those with seemingly more than us.

It’s either that or the common obsession we have to know who Taylor Swift is dating now. And as much as I think we’re all a little too interested in celebrity boyfriends and girlfriends gossip, it’s probably the former.

We’re on social media to stalk people we used to like or be close to, but aren’t anymore and this is our totally American way of snooping in from time to time on their life.

So many angry people in the world, yet they all look happy in the photos.

What does this have to do with the most recent tragedies in Dallas, Louisiana and Minnesota? The same as it did for Columbine, Sandy Hook, Aurora, Fresno and more.

Simply put, we just don’t treat each other very well and we’re hiding behind two things: a lack of self-esteem and insecurity.

I usually try to come up with a positive message at the end here, to tie it all together, to provide a spark of hope in an otherwise dark moment.

All I can come up with this time is that we can only take care of ourselves. Preaching, lecturing isn’t working. To be the change you want to see in the world, I suppose it’s the Nike tagline.

Just do it.

If we raise our children right, hug our spouse, wave to the neighbors, keep our commitments and just try our best to not stab each other in the back, shutdown the apps a little more, we’ll hopefully lay down an example to the next generation.

It would be nice if we were happy in the life we have, not the life we want others to perceive we have.

Worried about what to do yourself? Want your voice to matter in the world? At a loss of how to raise your children to avoid this in the future?

Start there.

Love yourself, your family and your life. Be proud of who you are and kind to those who aren’t like you. The young ones are watching.

And maybe, one of these days, they will have a chance to save us.

One of these days, I hope I am right.

American culture, Culture, Media, psychology, Society

Faux Real

Last week, the geniuses at Slate put together an incredible piece about “The Year of Outrage” – tracking what America was so mad about in 2014.

For every day of the year.

Safe to say that based upon this study, it would seem as though our faux anger has created actual, real emotions. This is both sad and slightly scary, meaning that we are having an increasingly difficult time determining what is real, what is fake and how to react to both.

We can get a false sense of just about anything these days. We can generate fear and reaction into someone with a post, an e-mail, a text. We can misrepresent what matters and what does not.

We are less connected physically, but through technology, social media and various work “efficiencies” we are more connected psychologically.

And let’s be honest, our psychological make-up is not always the most stable of places.

We are flat-out terrified of stuff that just does not matter, yet increasingly numb to that which does.

We do not see things the same way, leading the vast majority of us to react quite differently to the same situation.

For example, an e-mail sent by a co-worker at 10:14pm, over something that could not only be handled tomorrow, but next week, create for some a sense of dread or panic that they have done something wrong to receive said message at said hour of the day. The sender, by contrast, was just knocking out a few “to do” items and not really paying attention to the time of day or the subject matter.

This faux anxiety creates faux stress that feels as real as you can imagine. That stress leads to anger and lashing out at the smallest of things – like perceiving someone cut you off in traffic, leading to a real finger being flashed and real bad words being used.

Thus, often, our perception of reality becomes our reality.

Millions of Americans deal with differing levels of anxiety and to me, there can be no doubt this is contributing factor to our reactions. The best way to describe an anxiety attack is the feeling of being charged by a bear, when there is, in fact, no bear.

It cannot help us out psychologically when we get worked up over something that’s been put out on the line that we have no part in or cannot control. We’re manufacturing our own dramas. We’re desensitized, yet somehow overly worked up at the same time.

A sampling of the topics that made us grab our verbal pitchforks and raise fury like hell hath no in 2014? Just your usual mixed bag: bad jokes by people and companies, how people react and respond to each other in positions of power and authority and of course, race. Typically, it is how we reacted in hindsight that seems most perplexing.

If we’re so outraged all the time, how do we survive? If our not entirely true feelings are coming out in a very real way, how do we know when we’re actually experiencing anything real? How do we know if we’re really angry? How are we not just becoming the slightest bit numb and missing the things that matter?

Do we even know the difference anymore?

Rage is more of a controllable anger. Outrage seems to encompass some sort of moral or ethical fury. As Slate mentions in their piece, it feels showy and a little false. Probably because in America in 2014, the outrage is just that – a faux show.

We kind of enjoy putting on the show. For each other, for ourselves.

More people are outraged at Sony for pulling “The Interview” than people who were actually planning to see “The Interview.” If you didn’t plan to see the movie, what do you care that a studio wasted millions on a film and marketing only to pull it? What possible moral or ethical outcry could there be to this? Yet, there it was, headlining the news, trending on social media.

The show must go on.

Of course, there are the topics we were outraged by – like social issues – in a possibly decent and entirely pure way, but of course, both sides of the discussion blew it because we got snide, hateful, over generalized and just looked and sounded insane most of the time.

Most of our stories pass through the life cycle partly on their merit (newsworthiness) and partly – largely – due to how we react to it. “It” only becomes a thing if we let it, allow it or want it to. But who can actually tell what we really care about and what we faux care about anymore.

The general theory goes that in anger, you tend to not listen very well. If we’re so outraged and blinded by vengeful anger at all these topics and sensitive subjects in the world, how on earth are we going to have a proper discourse and actually build a bridge to solving said problems?

Ever argue with your spouse or significant other? The rage and indignation rises to a level that virtually blocks both of you out and all you can hear and see is the anger. The words don’t matter as much as the tone.

No point on earth can be made and accepted through shouting down, demeaning, mocking or condescending the opposing side. Uh, they already oppose you…so…certainly your remarkably smarmy attitude will win friends and influence people over to your side, right?

And after the anger and outrage have subsided, you might have a chance to get somewhere with the person opposite you.

Yet outrage exists as a kind of mental bomb. You cannot see it, but once it goes off, the effects of the outrage last much longer than you think they do. And the next time someone says something, they are gently traipsing through the mental mine field of your outrage, trying to avoid the buzz words or things they believe set you off before.

Or they just don’t even bother, which is kind of worse, because it means we’ve stopped caring.

We’ve all been there. It’s the people in your life that are actually no longer in your life. The ones you stopped seeing and calling – or the family you deal with at major events, but say nothing of relevance to anymore because it just is not worth the hassle of taking another hit of their outrage.

This is my overall fear: That we will stop caring about the stuff that actually matters because we’re too outraged and obsessed with the stuff that doesn’t – or too busy avoiding the social media bullies to realize we’ve become one of them.

We see what the backlash does to people, every day folks like you and me, writers, media types, celebrities. It crushes them like a tidal wave. The vitriol and anger override anything else, swallowing them whole, exacerbating the moment, most of the time making the reaction to a reaction a bigger moment than the moment.

Fake emotional outbursts create real damage. They create situations where there are none. These have been dubbed “nontroversies.”

By the look of it, we specialize in nontroversies, but what do we do when the indignation and public shaming passes, when the offending party has been branded, fired or both? Then what?

Simple.

On to the next one.

And we leave the trash and damage for someone else to pick-up. It’s not our problem.

This is the faux show.

This is America – where we pretend to care about that which matters little, where we put on our show, where we seek to portray the picture of perfection, of wealth, of happiness.

Except that we are broken inside, broke on the outside and empty all over.

The best gift this holiday season is one you can give both to yourself and help spread to others: be different. Don’t engage in the minutia, the gossip, the social media mobs. Stay positive, do not the negativity eat away your ability to discern the difference between what is real and what is imagined.

Know what is important. Spend some time thinking about that. Live in the present and embrace the unknown. Expect nothing. Calculate little. Just live and be.

Know that the only currency that truly matters in this world is faith, hope and love. Their value is immeasurable, which is why they are a treasure.

And those three – faith, hope and love – are the most real emotions you could ever experience.

Here’s to the hope that 2015 will be the Year of Anything But Anger.

Real or fake.

Life, Philosophy, Society, Uncategorized

The Tooth of the Matter

A few weeks ago, our precocious five-year-old son lost a tooth. It was his first, but this tooth was lost unlike any other in family history: in Florida, on some side road just south of Fort Myers, in the rented mini-van, just after Mass.

Darn thing just literally popped right out of his mouth. We could not locate its whereabouts, and in the midst of a family vacation-slash-destination wedding, it became a moment that passed.

But not before it was destined to become a fun mental memento. Really, at the end of a day, a week, a year – a lifetime – what is left but memories?

As I told our children driving home, in 30 years they would randomly remember something that sparks a bunch of other memories about this trip. Perhaps it would be the bucket we took as a bathroom “back-up”. (Don’t judge.) Maybe it will be the lost tooth, or the family sing-alongs, the stop for breakfast at Cracker Barrel, the boat ride on an ocean inlet, the sunshine, and the smell of the air, a palm tree, their aunt’s wedding or the color of the couch at our condo.

But something will inevitably jog their memory, many years from now, about Spring Break 2014.

It will become just a drop into a bucket full of moments like this in their lives, which I truly hope overflows with smiles and happiness. Really, I wish that for us all.

Over the years – thousands of them – we humans have managed to create quite the environment for ourselves. We have created more types and kinds of work than our ancestors could possibly imagine.

We play with gadgets that were frankly incomprehensible just 10 years ago. We create these elaborate situations ourselves to impress upon others that we are busy, because busy in a universal modern language equates productivity, success, action.

We spend time polarizing ourselves from the world, choosing sides and wrestling with these really intense issues and topics of concern.

The older I get, the more I come to realize that we are more frequently than not alienating ourselves from the entire original theory: life is to be lived.

I think if I had my druthers – and a small fortune – I’d spend the majority of my days living. Oh sure, we all do that now – but I mean Matthew McConaughey-style: L-I-V-I-N.

And while I certainly sound as though I’ve turned into a free-spirited hippie, or someone who’s seen “Dazed and Confused” one too many times, you’re getting caught again in the semantics.

Make no mistake; there is often great value in what we all “do” on the daily. From doctors to teachers to janitors, most all of our professions, chosen or not, serve society in some way. There is certainly nothing wrong with working hard, burning the midnight oil and feeling as though what you are doing is somehow, in some way, making a difference and contributing something positive to society.

But it is a thin line between that emotion and seeing that notification number on our inboxes increase. If we are honest with ourselves, we have reached a point in the world where we have to take mental stock of where we sit on that line. Are we pushing it in the sand? Have we crossed over it into a domain of obsession and perfectionism over a bunch of tasks that adds up to very little in the end? How can we be sure the side we are currently on is good or bad?

I might suggest it is a matter of faith. Not necessarily a matter of faith in a biblical sense, though that could be appropriate, but just faith in general.

The kind of faith that allows you to rest easy, for example, that the light will stay green. And though your eyes scan the road to verify no cars are running the red light, you put trust and faith in yourself, the rules of the road and others, that allows you to not ride your brakes and go through the intersection.

We speak frequently of luck, of someone watching out for us or karma. No matter what you believe in, this faith tends to weaken if something bad happens. I would contend, however, this is not a matter of faith failing us or letting us down.

Something happened, yes, but not all situations have logic and reason. The same way sickness and poverty are not a punishment or a lesson or a curse. Whether or not you accept this relies entirely on your attitude and commitment to that general faith.

Will it be OK in the end? We really don’t know. But it will happen all the same.

Really, the only question in these moments is do we have the fortitude to focus our resolve?

The rest of the world calls this crazy – to believe in what you are doing when no one else does.

But this is my favorite kind of embrace of life. Who is it we are all listening to? Each other, so it would seem.

So, why are we taking financial advice from our friend that we used to sit next to in high school economics and doesn’t even know what TINSTAAFL means? Why are we taking love advice from the neighbor’s dog-walker’s-Aunt, who has been married three times?

Our situations are all generally just different enough that precedent does not really matter.

For everyone who thinks young marriage cannot last, I can show you dear friends of ours who are a shining example of how it can. For anyone that belittles your favorite movie or band, I’m sure we would mutually agree one of theirs was equally questionable.

This whole world we’ve created for ourselves inside the times we live is a byproduct of the likes and dislikes of someone else, what’s popular and what just did not catch on. This is why wearing sandals in the winter gathers stares (and perhaps a cold): because it is just not normal.

You know what? I say wear your sandals in the winter should you want to – but not out of irony. Being different to be different is missing the point as well. Still, there is much to be praised for being different, for finding the undefined spaces between the lines and making your mark there.

Faith in oneself, in what you believe, is nothing more than a coping mechanism for getting through this world with some sense of a compass in hand. If you believe in something, then you have something to guide you. In this way, you will know deep inside your heart whether or not you are living each day with a purpose – a purpose defined solely for you and no one else.

Kind of unique, right?

This uniqueness, this independence, this idea continues to mold me, shape me and drive me. We do not know when and where this will all end, only that it will. But in the time between now and then, what will we do to live? Not simply in just breathing and monitoring our day, completing our tasks, but to feel life, to live it?

There is great purpose in simply finding adventure in the day, in smiling, in laughing, in crying.

And yes, in losing a tooth.

Martin Luther King Jr., Richard Sherman, Society

Lessons from a King

On Monday, it was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

I might have used “celebrated”, but that would be a stretch. We were far too focused on Richard Sherman’s WWE style promo cut on Erin Andrews following the NFC Championship to celebrate the life and work of Dr. King.

The vast majority of us sits and hides from the Polar Vortex, hitting the snooze button – or not even setting an alarm on this typically cold January Monday each year. Turns out, that makes quite the metaphor for our lives.

We have hit the snooze button one too many times.

The reasons are many, but mostly are due to the false sense of security we have about progress. Too many of us are oblivious to the problems we face, as a nation, as a society. The collective majority of us believe we are simply better than those generations before us.

While it may be true that we do not have many of the problems of the 1960s, we have the issues of today. And we are flat out ignoring them. In yet another call to arms and minds, this wonderful nation that could is quickly becoming a nation that can’t.

We can’t sustain this beast.

We can’t survive in political gridlock.

We can’t keep shooting each other with machine guns in schools.

We can’t keep striping away the fabric of our morality and rights by either vague posturing or blind ignorance.

We can’t live beyond our means for much longer.

But we can do so much more to improve our personal situations and those we call neighbors.

As I read some of the fantastic pieces commemorating Dr. King this week, I wondered: what would he think of the world now? Had he not been assassinated in 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. would be 85, no doubt an even bigger social, political and cultural icon for all that he would have accomplished in the 40-plus years since.

And it’s difficult to think about him without thinking of Bobby Kennedy, who was also assassinated in 1968. What might he have done had he lived? What would he think of the world now?

If we are honest, as interesting as it may be to speculate on such things, it really does not matter.

What matters is what we think of the world today.

What are we going to do to make it better?

If you actually study their measured words, Dr. King, and his contemporaries, truly transcended time and place. Their words are still relevant and important today. We just fail to heed them, listen to them, and implement them is all.

For example, let us return to Mr. Sherman, Seattle Seahawks cornerback and perhaps the best player at his position in the NFL. From the moment his amazing athletic feat occurred through today, we could run about a million different case studies of what still plagues us as a society.

We are a bit too obsessed with inconsequential things, like football and the famous. Far too many people cared about two teams from the West coast in the middle and eastern parts of this country. Sherman gained nearly 225,000 followers between the end of the game and Monday evening. My social media feeds were flooded with comments – mostly negative – about Sherman scaring Erin Andrews half to death.

We’re more prone to comment on something like Sherman’s outrage than we are on things like abortion, crime, or helping find homeless men, women and children shelter from freezing temperatures.

Why? Because if we ignore it long enough, we can pretend it is not there.

Everything is a personal choice or belief, therefore private, and in modern America, the private decisions and stances we have trump humility, human dignity and the betterment of our society. This is because most people do not want to have some other liberty infringed upon, so we willfully ignore others to save the ones we personally identify with.

But in the end, we all lose.

How does that relate to pro football? Simple – we can easily find common ground on the surface of any topic – like the fact Sherman seemed like a selfish, boastful jerk during the interview. But most will fall silent when we discuss a more substantive topic outside a sporting event or reality TV.

As Dr. King said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

King also said: “There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”

It might help if we knew what was right.

We seem to have forgotten grace, sportsmanship and humility. Sherman mocked the receiver he tipped the ball from, Michael Crabtree, who had, apparently, disrespected him. So, by all means, disrespect right back.

I cannot remember the last time I saw a tremendous play that the athlete who made it did not find it imperative to let the entire world (that just watched it) know what happened.

Why can we not let our actions speak for themselves? Maybe it has something to do with our lust for attention. Then again, it might be worth looking at what we do with the attention once we have it. Ask for the grand stage, and you must put on a grand show, right?

Dr. King’s thoughts: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

And where do we stand during others times of challenge and controversy? We distance ourselves as quickly as possible.

A player caught cheating in sports: “I never liked the guy, always suspected he was a cheater.” Really? Interesting you never came out and said as much.

I’ll admit to liking Lance Armstrong during his years on top and being duped by Mark McGwire. It was believable, yet not. It was borderline heroic. And it was a lie. Now we know. But I cannot re-write history – and neither can you.

It probably says more about who you would stand next to during a controversy of theirs than what you would do during one of your own.

We give a pass for emotion in the moment. After the initial backlash on Sherman, there was a backlash to the backlash. I read far too many “don’t stick a mic in an athlete’s face in that environment” and “the media begs for crazy moments and then freaks when they get one” type comments.

Far too often and far too easily we give a pass to people for their reactions “in the heat of the moment.” We should hold people accountable for their actions, reactions and emotions. It is indeed the measure of a man. As it is the measure of our society. We all reacted in the same manner as Sherman did. Neither was appropriate or befitting.

Until we can get a grip on ourselves and acknowledge how far we still have to go – that the journey of personal and societal growth never ends, only evolves – then we will continue to struggle with the reality that we are losing everything we say we value.

WE must stop hitting snooze.

WE must stop wasting our collective time and societies time by passively participating and only engaging in the stuff that does not matter.

Maybe WE could do something to transcend time and place, where memories are not just words, but live in action.

“People fail to get along because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they have not communicated with each other.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Aaron Rodgers, acceptance, New Year's Eve, Peyton Manning, Society, tolerance, Tom Brady

Accepted Assumptions

Watching the ball drop on New Year’s Eve has become a tradition for many Americans, though we cannot state with certainty why we still tune in. Perhaps out of tradition – and age – or both.

While watching the NBC crew kill time before everyone awkwardly – and poorly – counted down the last 10 seconds of the year (again), I found myself only casually listening to the conversation between Carson Daly and his co-hosts.

There was talk of Twitter gaffes and resolutions that are never kept. And in the next breath, I caught the mention of how they hoped 2014 would be a better year for us as a nation, how we could start accepting more, make better decisions and stop judging so much that we don’t enjoy life.

Not a great resolution if we just established we don’t keep them.

At that same moment, scrolling through Twitter, I came across a re-tweet that seemed like something off a grocery store checkout lane trash headline: Aaron Rodgers reportedly gay.

Sigh.

I read the story, and just as I suspected, it appeared to be written by someone who was 15 and thought “Burn Books” were a super idea. But it was filled with all sorts of supposed “facts” (read: rumors, gossip, heresy), so I sent a quick text to one of my best friends.

He had not heard this rumor either, but said it would not surprise him, yet nor would be care. After a little digging, we discovered that Rodgers had earlier that day felt it necessary to respond to said rumors on local Milwaukee radio that he “really, really likes women.”

Um, OK.

But there are so many layers here, that I wonder if this sort of resolution of acceptance has more to do with how we think and how we react than to how we feel?

What if Rodgers was gay? Would it matter? Obviously, it would not really, truly matter. But the reaction would from the standpoint that perceptions would be changed – from within his locker room, to the NFL, to the Wisconsin community. The sports world would be changed to have a league-MVP; Super Bowl MVP and Top 5 player announce to the world what his private life is.

And I can’t help but wonder, why? To what point and for what purpose? Whose business is it? And if it somehow changes your opinion of him, that is your issue.

There seems to be an ongoing search to out someone high up in professional sports, to the point we have athletes emphatically answering they do not have a closet to emerge from, which then makes them look bad – as if they have to put the Seinfeld “not that there’s anything wrong with that” reference tag at the end, just so the quote does not come across wrong.

Yet I wonder, what are we searching for? And why? What point are we trying to prove? What if gay athletes are not coming out simply because they just do not want to make their private life public? Is not enough of their life public and scrutinized as it is?

I cannot help but feel this process is a rushed exercise to make our society feel better, or to demand acceptance, or to prove that acceptance is not possible all in the name of winning some publicity battle over political correctness.

Because let us be brutally honest for a moment. We are the ultimate jury. We constantly judge people all of the time. We judge based on religion, race, line of employment, physical appearance, where we live, what we eat, what phones we use, our political ideologies, sports teams, shoes – and on and on.

We say we want to accept people for who they are, but we only do that if our perception of who they are actually matches, you know, who they are. So we judge on that, as well.

So, we are fine with Peyton Manning throwing 55 touchdowns and breaking all kinds of single season passing records, even though there’s a fair amount of evidence to suggest the Broncos ran up the score on their opponents. You know, the very same thing we shredded Tom Brady and the Patriots for in 2007, when he set the mark at 50 TDs.

The difference is simple in our minds: Brady was a bad guy, who played for a publicly despised coach, coming off Spygate and winners of three Super Bowls in the previous five years. Brady broke up with an actress he was having a child with and married a supermodel. He is a spokesman for Uggs. Manning is a spokesman for Cadillac and having football on your phone, married his college girlfriend and keeps his twins out of the media.

Our perception dictates our reaction and our acceptance of someone. Peyton Manning comes off as awe-shucks; a hard-working guy who is obsessed with football. Brady comes off as too cool for school, a little silver spoon-ish and seems to have other interests outside of the game, like posing for fashion magazines. This bothers us for a variety of totally personal, perception-based reasons.

Yet we choose to forget that Manning grew up the son of a college legend and NFL star, whose dad made the top salary in the league at one time and is actually much closer to the silver spoon moniker than Brady. We ignore the pedigree, No. 1 pick status of Manning and seem to constantly forget (despite media reminders) that Brady was seventh on the depth chart at Michigan when he arrived and split time with Drew Henson and was drafted in the 6th Round, with the body of a 14-year-old.

Yet we still don’t like it. We consistently form our collective narrative on famous people based off a very finite amount of information – and then make wild, grandiose assumptions.

We want all our stars obsessed with their respective sport, watching film 25 hours a day, saying all the right things and keeping out of trouble. And then, when they do, we say they have no personality. It’s why Manning’s turn on SNL a few years ago was so shocking – who knew Mr. Quarterback could be so funny? Who knew he had – gasp – a personality and comedic timing?

The American culture is heavily dictated by assumptions of what we already think we know, which in turn, kind of jumps into what we will inwardly and outwardly accept. People are shocked when they learn something that they don’t believe fits the profile of what they perceive.

For instance, would it not seem strange to the majority of us to learn that Johnny Manziel loves fine art? What about if we learn that Tony Romo was a huge Grateful Dead fan, and lived in a Bohemian style apartment and just keep money in the bank? What if we learned that LeBron James read Shakespeare and listened to Mozart before every game? Or Jay Cutler helped the elderly into their seats three hours before game time?

These things do not seem to jive with what we have already placed inside the box of what we expect based on a stereotype that fits a commonly held assumption.

Do these things matter? No. But you have to be careful with your brand now. More often than not, it would befit us to keep up the visual and verbal presentation of what is expected instead of what actually is. It is just easier for everyone involved. Some of us go on pretending, others go on assuming.

Almost like some sort of accepted game of charades.

This is why we have still got quite a bit of work to do before we actually make the strides we’re aiming for in our society.

Actions speak louder than words, as they say. So it really does not matter if Aaron Rodgers is gay or not – only our reaction to whether or not we even assume it is plausible.

Either way, that collective reaction says more about us than it does about him or anyone else. Perhaps we could cut down on the assumptions we make about others.

That would be a resolution worth keeping.

Read. Think. Act Different.

Category Archives: Society

The Tooth of the Matter

Lessons from a King

Accepted Assumptions

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