Monkey See, Monkey Do

Whether we are parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, neighbors, teachers, mentors, or community leaders, we encourage children to do good in school, work hard to be whatever they want be, and encourage them to be leaders. We want them to be successful, productive people so we are constantly reminding and trying to set the best example.

Prepping them to be leaders or at least not simply be blind followers starts early with sayings like "if Timmy jumps off a cliff, would you?" or chastise them by saying "monkey see, monkey do" when they get in trouble for following someone else's lead. We would rather our children plow their own path as opposed to someone else dictating their route.

More often than not, we are probably repeating the same themes our parents tried to instill in us. One of the simplest ways we can take a stand, be a leader, and not blindly follow decisions others have made for us is by voting.

For some reason a lot of us don't vote. In Dallas County alone, where municipal elections were just held, only 11% of registered voters participated. Let me put that another way: out of 1,074,042 registered voters only 119,077 voted. That means 954,965 did not. Wow, pretty sad!

We are content in letting people make rules, ordinances, and laws for us to follow with no input from us. We are content with missing an opportunity to show our kids how to practice what we preach. We are content with sending the message to our kids that our words are empty. To me it is very hypocritical to expect our kids to do what we can do ourselves, yet we don't.

Are we all just hypocrites?

~Andres