Doing what’s right instead of what’s popular

I’ve made a series of decisions and I’ve said a series of things during my life that have gone against what’s popular.  I have rocked boats, I have questioned, I have said “no”.  I’ve been called a rebel, I’ve been called “unmanageable”, I’ve been accused of being a smart ass.  In the workplace, I’ve been told to beware my CLM’s (career limiting moves) – to which I have replied “I know the Employment Standards Act by heart, thank you”.  I’ve been told to be more girly, more cooperative, less critical, less of a loner, less extroverted (because I’m somewhere in-between being a loner and a socialite), less gay, less of a tomboy, less opinionated.

And until recently, I was starting to wonder why I do all these things.  Why do I rock the boat?  Why do I bother to speak up or to do things differently when there’s hardly ever any personal reward in doing it?  Why do I care to make things better for everyone else when no one else is even caring to do their part?

Part of me knows that it’s naturally ingrained in me to be curious and to not just go along with something because someone says so.  And I’ll always be vocal about it, sometimes, to my own detriment.  And just when I think it’s probably best to shut up and go along with the way things are, I get a “thank you” from someone who felt represented by what I did or what I said.  And then, more and more people come forward publicly or privately with a “thank you” of their own.

It makes me realize that I’m not alone and that what I’m doing or saying is worthwhile.  And that’s why I do all of these things.

An actress/playwright friend of mine was telling me about the reason why she wrote a play about her own experiences with mental illness.  It was because people came to her after the show and thanked her sincerely for having expressed herself about that topic.  Just that made everything worth the effort and certainly worth exposing her private experiences to the world through art.  I know because personally, her work has affected me greatly and she knows this because I’ve told her.  But people like her also do what they do knowing that there might be a time when no one comes forward with a ‘thank you’.  That, deep inside, you just hope that you’ve done something for the world through your own personal expression.

And that’s what I wish for not only as a person, but also with my own artistic projects.  I want to do that.  I want to move people, I want to expose what’s wrong with the world or what’s right with it, I want to share my personal conflicts because they might be your personal conflicts too.  And I want to do that as an individual, outside of the arts, too.

People need people that they can relate to.  Some people need others to speak for them.

One of the reasons why I loved the speech that I posted yesterday (the speech on the arts, in French, by Wajdi Mouawad) is because during this speech, he highlights the fact that artists are often hated by the rest of society because they have a certain liberty that most people don’t: the liberty of expression.  Artists are ostracized because they don`t fit in with the way that most people do things.  Most of them don’t have a 9 to 5 job and they don’t have an imposed principle of political correctedness guiding their work.  They observe and they reflect life back to us in their own way.

And they don’t give a fuck about the nonsense that we tend to put up with in our life.  Naturally, it’s easy for those of us who don’t work as full-time artists to disregard them out of jealousy and envy.  It’s why I think we need more artists.  To remind all of us that some of the stuff we do is absurd and we do it ONLY because it’s popular but we don’t even bother to see if it’s effective or if it’s the right thing to do.

We have something to learn from artists: they often do what they for very little financial gain because it’s more important to them to do it than to not do it.  They do what they do at great personal loss because they don’t fit in.  They constantly have to deal with questions from friends and family “why don’t you find something more secure to do?”.  Why can’t you just be like everyone else?  Don’t you know that there are “rules” in life?  Why can’t you be more like “so and so”?

My own personal rule about the “rules” in life is that you better have a good reason to tell me to do something.  I don’t take very well to being told “do this, because I said so” or “say this because that’s what you should say”.  No.  Tell me why.  Give me a compelling reason other than “because I said so” and if your reason is backed by evidence or it’s the truth or it’s truly and genuinely the right thing to do, I will do what you say – no more questions asked.  And you will have earned my respect.  But too often, we just follow the leader even when it’s making us sick, sad or angry to do so.

Recently, I received a few telemarketing calls while working at home.  It annoyed me because usually, when I work at home, I get into a flow and I hate being disrupted by something so stupid as a telemarketing call!  So I wondered: are companies just doing this out of habit or is it still profitable to annoy us?

It’s so easy to fall into that line of thinking, of doing things because that’s the “soup du jour” or because it’s what’s popular.  I guess the one thing to really think about whenever you’re doing something is “am I doing it only because it’s popular?”  If so, is it popular because it’s effective or are there better ways of doing things out there?  Have I even bothered to look it up?

And if you do find solutions that aren’t popular, are you ready to propose them?  Are you willing to lead a life that isn’t popular to do what’s right?

I am.

So how can you do it and not be scared to speak up?  Educate yourself.  Read, speak with others, especially experts in the field that concerns you.  Learn your rights.  Read about the law, read about finances, read about business, read about human resources.  Read the newspaper.  Talk to strangers – sometimes you’ll learn something new by having an unexpected conversation with someone at the bus stop.

When you know something’s not right, challenge it.

In elementary school, during a class on social studies, I was telling the class that I had just seen a video of Martin Luther King Jr. giving a speech on civil rights.  I was telling everyone how appalling it was to have seen pictures of black people hanging from trees and how that really bothered me.  And I wondered why we weren’t learning about that and why people just watched it happen.  And my teacher said to me “Oh Julie, don’t try to be righteous.  It’s what everyone was doing at the time.  You have that opinion now, because we’re more socially progressive these days.  But if you’d have been born in those days, you would have let it happen too”.  To which I replied, “No.  I wouldn’t have.  Stuff like that is never right.”  (As a side note, I’m just finishing up a spoken word piece on this subject, entitled “The boy who tans in the winter” – I might post it later)

There are so many awful things that happen that we just ignore either because we’re scared of saying something about it or we feel helpless.  A lot of the time, it’s because we don’t know our rights.   If you want to feel more confident, as I mentioned earlier, educate yourself.  You’d be surprised how a lot of people who make up the rules don’t actually know the law and often, they’re not well versed in things like ethics either.  More importantly, a lot of the bad stuff that happens in the workplace, in school and in society at large works on the assumption that most people are too lazy or too scared to educate themselves and to question what’s going on or how things are done.  Remember that.  Most people ARE too lazy or too scared – it’s up to you to decide if you want to be one of them or if you won’t fall for the tricks that people use to manipulate, to abuse, to control and to silence.

But if you do decide to speak up, don’t do it because you expect someone to thank you.

Question and speak up out of principle.

Question and speak up  because it’s the right thing to do.

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