Disturbing events have danced on the front pages of newspapers and websites around the county, giving rise to a new era of uncertainty for school campuses, pensive politicians and everyday emulations. The most basic decisions have been thrown into jeopardy while the days of gliding across the campus have been cut short, fear replacing confidence, weakness pushing aside strength.
In this chasm of uncertainty, a void has emerged, an uncontested demand for answers. Why the hypocrisy? Why the back and forth? So we throw our hands up to the sky, embracing our natural instinct, and look for answers. Our chief complaint is against nothing other than the weather: umbrella one day, shorts the next. These few months have been vexing. Weeks of cold are followed by weeks of warmth – and everything in between. Like a little child running away with your favorite pen, the weather skips about, dragging you along with it. It tests our skills of adaptation, challenging us with a new little game every day. Dress for success, all the way.
Thus, we ponder the Shakespearean question of “Whether or not?” But amidst assuming the role of psychiatrist and flinging out diagnoses of “bipolar disorder,” we have lost heed of the most necessary observation: So ready to complain about this winter weather anomaly, we have forgotten the hypocrisy that exists within ourselves.
Our beliefs hang on a thin line.
We download billions of dollars worth of pirated software and media over the Internet, but would never dream of stealing a $1.19 candy bar from the Union Shop. We believe in the importance of a balanced life, yet spend up to 75 percent of our waking lives working and 10 percent watching TV. Skinny jeans are in fashion, yet obesity continues to climb. We receive speeding tickets and never alter our driving habits.
Email has shattered barriers of time and place, yet forced us farther apart. If you lie down with the dogs, you rise with the fleas, but if you can’t beat them, join them. The more the merrier, but two’s company and three’s a crowd.
We are too busy growing up to witness our parents growing old. We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to make ourselves thin while children in Somalia die because they are too thin. When war is on our side, it is patriotism; when it is on theirs, it is terrorism.
Caught in a flurry of complaints against the world beyond, a simple and yet frightening thought has slipped our minds.
We are the flip-floppers.
Our criticism is of society’s greater umbrella. The dips and downs of the economy are “horrendous,” the prices at the fuel pump “fuel rage,” the “big boss” is “always to blame.” Like our perception of the weather, society is at fault – politicians flip-flop back and forth, our wallets cannot adapt to climbing prices, the media is just watering down the news and we’ve got golf balls of red tape and a tornado of hate. Forecast fiascos.
Therein lies our fatal flaw. We have forged a disconnect between society’s problems and our role in them, calling such challenges a “bipolar disorder” and nestling ourselves into the comfort of self-pity. The world will probably never change. Temperatures will dip, corruption scandals will be revealed and people will continue to struggle.
But we can change our response. Trayvon Martin, the Oakland shootings, concerns of racial hate on the campus – these ideas just change with the political and social climate. And that makes finding where we stand in all issues all the more valuable.
So meet sun with flip-flops, rain with boots and dry sidewalks with TOMS. Flip-floppers were made for flip-floppers. Weather or not.
Fatimah Waseem is a freshman neurobiology and physiology and journalism major. She can be reached at waseem@umdbk.com.
