Not Just Doing My Own Thang

 Oh, hippies!

Time has aged us all.

But, you know, some of that hippie thang still lives on with us.

Unfortunately, for the most part, not the good stuff.  Not the environmental concern (that does exist, but I wouldn't attribute it to the hippie culture).  Certainly not the so-called liberal politics.

Am I of the generation where I could have been a hippy?  Close enough, I guess.  I was a teenager in the late sixties and early seventies.  But I never was.  I was always straight-laced (!) and fairly conservative, from a personal appearance and conduct level perspective.  Most of the hippies I knew in high school weren't peaceniks and protestors.  For the most part, they were hoodlums and roughnecks, more concerned with getting high than with treating other people well.

And that is what has survived of the hippie culture to this day.  Not an effort to reach a helping hand and strive to make a better planet for all, but just a general impulse to do your own thang.  Want to smoke dope?  DO YOUR OWN THANG!  Want a looser definition of marriage and sexual responsibility?  DO YOUR OWN THANG!  Want to party? DO YOUR OWN THANG!  Want to make money and buy the things you want?  DO YOUR OWN THANG! Want to worship Jesus by rocking out and speaking in tongues*?  DO YOUR OWN THANG!

The hippie movement flowed naturally into Reagan and the age of greed.  Some of the hippies became yippies - young professionals consumed with doing their own thang.

And some of those aging hippies are Trump supporters.  Why?  Because he is the poster child for selfishly DOING YOUR OWN THANG. As long as you blindly worship Trump, or at least let him DO HIS OWN THANG, enriching himself by grafting YOU.

I am not dismissing hippies altogether.  I know a few who are decidedly progressive, who care a great deal about the environment and social/economic equity.  But, I'm sorry to say, they are outnumbered by those who DOING THEIR OWN THANG means first and foremost prioritizing themselves and their own enrichment,

So, let me make it clear.  Me wearing a mask in public is not me DOING MY OWN THANG.  It has nothing to do with personal preference, or "you do you, Tom," or prioritizing myself.

I wear a mask in public because of YOU.  I care about YOU.  I care about doing what I can to halt this awful pandemic, this horrible virus that has infected AT LEAST 1 in 5 of the people of Ware and Pierce Counties, that has killed almost 300 people in our rural landscape. So I take it very seriously.  

Yes, I am vaccinated.  No, I have not gotten COVID (to date).  Yes, I am careful, or as careful as I can be given the behavior of others.  But I know about the potential of breakthrough cases.  And I know, despite my caution, I could get one of those breakthrough cases.  And I am very afraid that when I contract it, it will be too mild for me to catch the symptoms, and I, therefore, run the risks of infecting others.  And with the super high rate of unvaccinated around here, I run the risk of infecting one of them.  I could be responsible for someone else getting it, and their case might not be so mild.  And I cannot handle being responsible for that.

I am not DOING MY OWN THANG.  I am not simply choosing pepperoni on my pizza over peppers.  I am not trying to follow the drumbeat of my own drummer.

I am trying to do the RESPONSIBLE thing, the CARING thing, the thing that HAS TO BE DONE if we are going to get out of this terrible pandemic.

Get vaccinated.  Wear a mask.

This isn't MY THANG.  If we're going to make it out of this, it absolutely has to be OUR THANG.

*This is not meant as a negative reflection of Pentecostals or the long tradition of the speaking of tongues in Acts.  I recently read a book where some hippies were forming churches that did this.  Maybe I could have thought of a better example.  Maybe I'll edit it later.  I don't know.  Just don't obsess over the wrong thing.