One day, sometime during my elementary school years, it suddenly occurred to me that I had to be the luckiest kid in the world.
I had defied all the odds.
How amazing, I thought, that I happened to have been born on the right side of everything!
I was born in the right country, into the right religion, even the right denomination, and my parents voted for the right political party.
What are the chances of that happening very often?
And if there was a right side, there had to be a wrong side.
And all through those early years, I congratulated myself on the good fortune of not having landed on the wrong side of anything.
But as I got closer to middle school age, a troublesome thought began to gnaw at me.
What if all those other people — all those people from other religions, or who go to the church down the street, or live in another country, or vote for those other guys on a regular basis — what if those people were congratulating themselves for the same reason I was celebrating my own good fortune?
So I asked a grownup.
Not just a random grownup, but a relatively wise one. A go-to grownup when I came up on one of life’s big questions.
“You know how we think we’re right and they’re wrong?” I began. “Well, do they think they are right and we are wrong too?”
The relatively wise grownup didn’t even have to stop and think about it.
“Julia,” he replied, in a resigned and disappointed tone, “they would just love to hear you saying that.”
It was one of the most embarrassing moments of my young life. I realized I had made a huge mistake, that I had somehow betrayed all that was right.
It was enough to keep me from even entertaining the question for several years.
It is strange to realize, from the vantage point of several decades, that I never really had anything to be ashamed of at all. I really had every reason to be proud of considering the question and checking it out with a relatively wise grownup.
But those were strange times, and sometimes they affected the ability of people to think clearly.
It’s often hard to step back from ourselves, and our times, and think clearly. Especially when the times are strange.
But all times are strange, in one way or another, even if some times seem, in hindsight, to be stranger than others.
And we humans, as social creatures, tend to get swept up in the opinions of whatever time we are living in.
Or sometimes the opinions that others in power want us to have.
That is what likely was going on with the relatively wise grownup that day. Those kinds of social pressures are hard to detect, and hard to resist.
But I like to imagine other ways he might have answered my question. Answers that would have been true no matter who was involved, or what they believed.
Answers like the one I might have gotten if I were talking about some disagreement that didn’t involve any groups that involved us.
In other words, if nobody in power needed us to believe one way or another.
It’s not easy to do, but it is good practice for the day when some inquisitive young person may entrust us with an honest question.
Julia Cochran is a licensed professional counselor in Rincon and a psychology instructor at Armstrong State University. She can be reached at 912-772-3072 or by email at JCochranPhD@GileadCounseling.com. Any opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Armstrong State University.