100 Words Per Mile: Making Our Own Reality

A bit on anti-vaxxers and The Matrix Resurrections

December 21, 2021
6.00 miles
48:10

We’re visiting my in-laws for an entire week. So my wife and I get to experience sleeping in together again.

Last week, our daughter was given her first vaccine shots, and as much as I prepared to console my wife during and after, I should’ve spent time preparing myself for my daughter’s cry. I knew she would, and I knew I wouldn’t like it, but this cry was different. This cry was pain.

Were we not navigating a pandemic, I probably wouldn’t have thought much about vaccinations. They are pretty standard, and have been my entire life. The existence of anti-vaxxers wasn’t something I’d considered until I read about them in college. But now, as politicians have politicized a pandemic (and by extension, vaccines), it’s hard not to consider the vaccine “debate” as my daughter is getting cocktails injected into her thigh.

At the very foundation of it all, I guess I’m just a trusting person. It’s why I give money to the homeless woman by the grocery store. It’s why I believe my boss when he says a raise is on the way even though it’s been a month. I’m an optimist by trade, which is nice, because it allows me to relinquish control.

If a doctor and a scientist insist that vaccines are not only safe, but also responsible, then I trust them. Doing my own “research” isn’t going to yield anything more substantial than the education one receives in years of medical school.

Suppressing my ego has been a positive exercise, both for my mental health and the strength of my relationships with other people. I think our need to prove institutions wrong, or to “out” the big bad, is a symptom of an inflated sense of self. Consider the neuroticism that’s risen in the age of social media, and the mob mentality of cancel culture to go with it. But also consider the power one must feel when they take someone down, or expose them, or ridicule them. I bet it’s intoxicating.