Sometimes I just need to brain dump. This post is one of those times.

I am 40 years old. I came to age during a time when cynicism ruled. There was a general question everything attitude and a stick-it-to-the-man mentality, though I honestly don't know that I knew who the man was until at least college.

So I find myself struggling with a few things lately...

As a parent, I find I have to tone down my cynicism with my kids. They are full of hopes and dreams as they are just now experiencing the world. Daniel and I joke all the time about how we need to avoid being dream crushers too often when it comes to our kids. Most of the time we try to help them reason and think through their ideas logically, without just crushing those ideas. It's a fine line.

When I read books – literature, news, contemporary writings, I naturally question it all. I don't tend to take experts at their word. I need corroboration. I need more facts. Feelings are good, but they don't really cut it for me overall. I need concrete evidence. So many things today seem to be driven by feelings and fear and everyday it all seems more and more bizarre. Read 1984 again and it will rock your world with how the last year has been playing out – I'm speaking to the culture in general.

The last year and a half with the pandemic and the willingness of so many to just believe what they tell you has been blowing my mind. The first few months, it made sense to slow down and assess what was going on. To read and learn from as many different experts as possible. When it became clear that we weren't experiencing another Black Plague, my cynicism kicked in. And to be honest I gravitated toward like-minded thinkers. But we were often left wondering, what happened to questioning everything? What happened to sticking it to the man? Why are people just doing what they are told? With the masks and vaccines? The whole thing has been so surreal from where I sit and from the world view I grew up with. This following along out of fear (as I perceive it) is so different from the cynicism I was surrounded with growing up.