Something that is important to understand about me is that I really don’t like conflict. I don’t like bringing up issues I have, I don’t like making people angry, and I really hate fighting. I’d do just about anything to avoid it. I believe that this was one of the main reasons why when I was younger (say, in middle school), whenever anybody brought up politics or government, I’d shrug my shoulders and respond with the non-committal, “I’m just not interested in politics,” or alternatively, “I don’t want to ever get involved in politics.” I watched the news with my parents almost every night, and I saw the heated disputes that were chiefly caused by contrasting political beliefs. So, instead of paying attention, I went off to invest my energy in something else. Any political opinions I did form were heavily influenced by what I overheard my parents saying—spotty and incomplete information, and my own trivial gut feelings based on right and wrong. Through most of middle school and the beginning of high school, that’s the way things went for me.
A little into high school, I started getting some new perspective. The classes I took, mostly history and religion (I went to a Catholic school), began laying out the importance that government and politics have in not only other peoples’ lives, but also in my own. I learned about government structures and Supreme Court cases. I studied “hot topics” like LGBTQ+ rights and abortion, and heard arguments both for and against them. I was given the opportunity, through my education, to develop my own opinions for the first time. And much to my surprise, I kind of liked it. I even started to go online at home and research areas of interest for myself. However, I still didn’t let that overpower my hatred of conflict.
But in 2012, the beginning of my junior year, I was in an American History class during the same year as a presidential election. My teacher changed her lesson plan to incorporate the debates and speeches, enthusing every class about how lucky we were to be learning about American history at the same time as such a historical event. She was right, too. It couldn’t have been a better platform to bring me to fully appreciate the importance and the excitement of politics and government.
I started to pay attention to politics. The news at night interested me because, for once, I knew what they were talking about. I started asking questions about my parents’ political beliefs, what my teacher thought of the most recent headline about the presidential candidates, and so forth. I even started to question what I believed. As I read more and watched more, I built up my understandings and opinions on the foundation my education had provided me.
So I took a stand and began to be a little more vocal about my newfound beliefs. I shoved that part of me that cringed at the thought of ruffling any feathers, especially when I found that my political beliefs didn’t line up with my parents or peers all the time. I liked the feeling of being informed and able to discuss issues, even in an offhanded way, because for once I was seeing why those debates were so heated and why discussion of politics came with such contention.
It’s because people care. Even if they have starkly different ideas of what things should be done and how we should do them, speaking up and making themselves heard shows that it’s important enough to spark disagreement and fight for your opinions. That’s what democracy is about, after all. And now, a ways into my second year of college, I care, too. I still hate conflict, but the state of my country and the world means more to me than my comfortable silence.
But there’s this thing I hear sometimes that kind of confuses me. It’s that my generation, the Millennials, don’t care. We’re apathetic and lazy when it comes to politics, and we’re going to let the world fall apart when we’re older. Well, from my experience, this is completely false. My generation has grown up in a time when it’s easy to not trust politics as the route to a better future. The economy is still recovering and wars are still raging. However, we’ve witnessed massive paradigm shifts in just a few short decades. We’re following the examples of politically inclined and enthusiastic role models in popular culture like Leslie Knope because they show us how important it is to care. I know I’m not the only one who wants to make things better.
So yeah, I still hate conflict. But, to quote Dr. Seuss, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” I push that aside because it’s important to care and talk about what you care about. Maybe then I can be the start of something, or better yet part of something even bigger than me.
Image Credit: The Clearly Dope Tumblr, Spoilers, Hexjam, Oh No They Didn’t