As I looked up into my rearview mirror, I saw the large dump truck behind me getting closer and closer.  We had stopped at a red light and I just happened to stop right before the right turn lane began.  The truck behind me wanted to turn right and was pushing me to go forward, even to the point of running up on the curb to go around me.  I could have moved forward a little bit but the teacher in me saw this as a learning experience for the truck driver.  Patience is a virtue and just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

Not to focus on bad drivers this morning, but there were so many examples.  Like, just because you know your brakes work doesn’t mean you should go as fast as you can and slam on your brakes just in time before you hit someone.  Hint:  if the back of your car goes up when you brake, chances are you were going too fast and waited too long to brake! Just because you can….

These are just a couple of silly examples of how I believe our culture thinks lately.  The Declaration of Independence talks about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.   The first amendment of the constitution guarantees freedoms of religion, expression, assembly and the right to petition by prohibiting the government from restrictions or dictating.  Neither document says “just because you can, you should”.  What is implied in these documents is that along with freedom comes great responsibility.  Just because you can doesn’t mean nobody else matters or that their freedoms are less than yours.

This pursuit of happiness has taken an interesting turn lately.  It seems that we’re trying to shelter ourselves and our children from ever feeling anything less than happy.  By raising our kids to never have to deal with anything negative is a dangerous thing.  Bad things are going to happen in life, sometimes small disappointing things and sometimes devastating things.  And while children should be sheltered, depending on their age, from things the are too “adult” for them to handle, sheltering them completely is not healthy and it makes them believe that life should always feel good.  Kids are “devastated” or “crushed” when they don’t get the grade or the win or the trophy or the result they think will make them happy – although I’m not sure if it’s the kid or the parent in some instances who feels this.  In so many of these instances a “helicopter” or “lawnmower” parent might hover over their child or bulldoze their way ahead of their child to make sure they are never hurt or disappointed and instead they end up  confronting others they believe brought these feelings on.  Perhaps it’s a teacher or a coach who then becomes a target for bringing on these negative feelings.  So instead of teaching kids how to cope, they are taught to make excuses or find scapegoats.

Just because you can leads some to live in denial. I had a very young student yell at me the other day in class because I moved him to a place in my room where he might be more successful.  He didn’t understand why he couldn’t behave in whatever way he wanted.  As he yelled “nobody can tell anybody no if they don’t want to be told no” or something like that (he was young), his angry response told me that his experience with someone telling him he couldn’t do what he wanted was pretty limited.  In this case, his wants, as immature as they were, were interfering with learning for the rest of the class. Our current problem seems to be that we also have adults who think and sometimes behave the same way.

So what is the solution?  I watched a video by Simon Sinek where he discusses young adults who struggle in the workplace because we haven’t taught them that life will be hard and how to cope with it as children.  What happens is that those in authority expect an employee who reacts to problems like they do and instead they get young people who don’t know how to react if something hasn’t been laid out neatly in front of them.  They still want to do what feels good and have trouble when someone gets in the way of those feelings. Whose responsibility is it then to train young people to cope with uncertainty and change and, at this age, can they?  Who explains to what is essentially now two generations of people who have grown up thinking I should be able to do what I want, no matter what.

I go back to cars.  Fairly recently, a motorcyclist was killed in an accident in our community.  The driver who turned in front of the cyclist may have been under the influence.  It may have been this person’s choice to get behind the wheel of a car under the influence just because he could.  But they weren’t the only one at fault.  The young person on the motorcycle was going between 80-100 mph on a road marked 45 mph.  This person was driving this speed just because they could, but they obviously shouldn’t.  While not every decision to do what you feel like despite its affect on others may not be deadly like this accident, anytime we do anything just because we can, without thought for others, affects someone in a negative way. Whether its something as tragic as a person pulling in front of a motorcycle or something as seemingly benign as not eating right or exercising, your choices affect someone, even if its just yourself.  I know, because my favorite saying as I eat something I shouldn’t is “just because I can”. But  just because you can doesn’t mean you should.