Ending the Zombie Apocalypse! Letting the Rebel Inside of You Out!

Warning:  Dreams, Zombies, and Sheep

            Winston Churchill said, “When you’re twenty you care what everyone thinks.  When you’re forty you stop caring what everyone thinks.  When you’re 60 you realize no one was ever thinking about you in the first place.”  It’s likely your Why or Dream will not be appreciated, understood, nor necessarily valued by those around you.  Why?  Most people are too busy thinking about themselves to appreciate someone else’s Why. 

Another reason others may not appreciate your Why?  Jealousy.  Most people have locked away their Dreams, their imaginations, and their creativity in quiet desperation.  They have traded the spirit of adventure for the spirit of safety and security.  They have resigned themselves to their fates.  They are walking dead.  Zombies!  It’s one of the reasons I think we are fascinated with the zombie apocalypse.  Most of us are living it already!

Friederich Nietzsche called this the herd mentality.[i]  According to Nietzsche we are sheep, seeking security and safety in the herd over true, vibrant life!  When a Martin Luther King Jr. comes along, someone who says “think different,” we don’t like that.  We want ease, comfort, and safety. We don’t want to change. We don’t want to be vulnerable. We want to avoid pain, even if who we truly are and our Why is on the other side of struggle, vulnerability, and pain.

In the English Department copy room where I teach there is an old Apple advertisement.  It depicts an old Mac Computer, and below the picture is one of Apple’s old slogans:  “Think Different!”  In red pen, written between the t and the exclamation point is an ly.  Obviously, some English teacher felt compelled to correct Apple’s advertisement to reflect the proper form of the modifier after the word think.

Besides making all English teachers look like completely uptight, unhappy, nerds, ironically, the corrector of said advertisement completely missed the irony, and, instead, became part of the joke!  Why, because most people would rather be right than be successful.  Most people would rather be safe and secure in the way things have always been than take risks, think outside the box, or see things from a different point of view.  Most people would rather remain the same rather than grow.

The herd.  In most of public education, people move from pen to pen when the bell rings and the shepherd (teacher) lets them go.  At our J.O.B. (just over broke, but comfortable) we punch in, get our fifteen-minute break, one-hour lunch, and punch out.  We know what’s coming.  It’s our lot in life.  It may not be a lot, but it’s a life.

Then someone comes along and completely blows up all our preconceived notions, all our traditions, all our community ethics, all we’ve come to know and expect, and we don’t like it one bit. Who are these people?  Ancient Aliens?  No!  They are people like Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Theresa, Steve Jobs, Jesus of Nazareth, Henry David Thoreau, Teddy Roosevelt, Lao Tzu, Henry Ford, the Wright Brothers, the list goes on and on.  (Come to think of it, maybe they are aliens.  They seem so foreign to most of us!)  You know them because they transform humanity and society.

Arthur Schopenhauer writes, “All truth passes through three stages.  First, it is ridiculed.  Second, it is violently opposed.  Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”[ii]  We struggle to understand that the Dreams of others serve us even though we may not know we are being served until much later.  However, if we make The Shift, we see that change is inevitable but growth is optional.  We discover that our own Dream will serve those we love, even if they don’t understand it at first.

This is what happened in the U.S. in the 1950’s and 60’s. In the United States, even though we have a long way to go, as the evening news makes clear, many of us see racial equality as self-evident.  But not long ago, large numbers of Americans were threatened by, troubled by, and resistant to racial equality.  Those who lived to overcome racial injustice in the U.S. experienced the three stages of truth:  ridicule, violent opposition, and self-evident acceptance.  Thank God they were willing to lead in love, sticking with their Dream to transform a nation to truly practice its original creed that all people are created with unalienable rights, among those being life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Your Dream And No One Else’s

Albert Camus writes, “The only way to deal with an un-free world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”[iii]  Camus was not saying be a rebel.  Like, “They say yes, so I say no. They say stop, so I say go!”  That’s just silly.

He was saying be unapologetically who you are.  You are uniquely you for a reason.  Jobs, the Wright brothers, and King all understood this.  You have a Dream for a reason.  That reason is grounded in love for yourself and others.  As Arthur Schopenhauer suggests, your Dream, your reason, and your love are all found in Truth that is self-evident. It is integral to the world you inhabit, and, regardless of the voices around you, you must bring your Dream into the world, whether or not others understand, appreciate or value it.  You must give it and continue to give it.  This is the pathway to real life, abundance and success.  This is the path of walking in your Greatness.

to be nobody but yourself -- in a world that is doing its best,

night and day, to make you everybody else --

means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight;

and never stop fighting[iv]

- e.e. cummings

Your Dream begins with your Why.  So, what is your Why?  Find it!  Live it!  And say goodbye to Zombieland!

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[i] See Friederich Nietzsche’s essay Beyond Good and Evil.  First published in 1886.

[ii] Schopenhauer, Arthur.  The World As Will. Dover.  1996.

[iii] Camus, Albert.  The Outsider.  Penguin Modern Classics.  Penguin. 2006

[iv] Cummings, E. E.  E.E. Cummings: A Miscellany. Ed. George J. Firmage.  Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc. No longer in print, though available for free at http://www.muebooks.com/ee-cummings-a-miscellany-PDF-4793986/.