It occurred to me today that the right thing to do is, often, the uncomfortable thing to do.

There’s a sub-movement going on right now, in light of the recent rise in popularity of the Black Lives Matter movement and a national heightened awareness of racial injustices, to get Colin Kaepernick reinstated to the NFL and signed by an NFL team. For those of you who are unaware, Colin Kaepernick was a starting quarterback who protested police brutality and racial inequality during the 2016 NFL football season by sitting and/or kneeling during the National Anthem. Not long afterward, he found it hard to get a job because of the widespread disapproval of his actions, whether or not that disapproval was, in and of itself, a proper course of action.

I remember in 2016, when this was happening, I had black students in my classes that decided that they wouldn’t stand for the Pledge of Allegiance when we did it at the beginning of the school day, either. They were not alone. Our school district, that serves a significant population of black students, ended up drafting a policy to allow for them to “not pledge allegiance”.

But, I can’t say I blame Kaepernick, or those students of mine. Not one bit.

I think our nation, and its failures, deserve close scrutiny. I think we should be looking at what we’re doing wrong, so we can try to start doing it right; there’s a word for this and it’s called progress. But, for many people, staring closely at the things that you are doing wrong is an uncomfortable proposition. If I had to guess, I think that stems from too many people working too hard to shelter their fragile egos, or maybe it comes from people not giving constructive criticism as often as they give destructive criticism.

In any case, I think Kaepernick was trying to draw the spotlight onto certain problems that exist, and have existed for a long time, in the United States, problems that we aren’t doing anything to make better. While America might be a great nation, we’re not perfect, and kudos to anyone who wants to see America getting better, even if it’s uncomfortable to address those issues.

I mean, if we won’t even gather the intestinal fortitude to talk about these issues, how will we ever make progress in changing them?!?! I applaud Colin Kaepernick for saying, publicly, that he was not comfortable paying homage to a nation who treats its citizens —ANY of its citizens– poorly, as part of any of its systems.

It’s time for us, as a country, to start getting uncomfortable for the sake of starting to make some progress.

* * *

One of the hardest things for me to do, as a parent, is to admit to my kids when I am wrong. I don’t know if it’s my ego, or the fear that they will see me as fallible and then I will lose credibility as the leader of the family, I don’t know what it is, but I hate having to go back to my kids and tell them that I was wrong.

The thing that usually motivates me to do it, even though I usually don’t want to do it, is an understanding that my children will learn how to apologize when they see me apologize. They will learn to admit weakness when they see me admit weakness.

As a matter of fact, I’ve discovered over the years as a parent, that my children know how to act because of what they’ve watched me do. I know this, occasionally, when I watch them do the right thing and I think to myself, “Look, they learned how to do the right thing by paying attention to their mother.” Unfortunately, I also know this because of the times when I’ve watched them do the wrong thing, and I think to myself, “I guess I need to pay more attention to the example that I’m setting.”

Seriously though, if we pan out a little bit from this micro-view of my family, to take a look at the society at large, we have entire generations who are looking to their parents for the example to follow, and then by and by, those generations raise subsequent generations. This is the way that it’s always been.

Along these lines, I don’t know if you’ve ever gotten aggravated by an old person complaining about young people before, but it just now occurs to me that those old people have no one to blame but themselves, for they raised the generation that ended up raising the generation that they come to despise.

If we don’t want our future society falling apart, it’s up to each of us to raise our children in such as way that our grandchildren are raised by high quality citizens.

And sometimes, that work in uncomfortable work.

* * *

I don’t like people that much.

No, scratch that.

I don’t like having to interact with people. It often makes me uncomfortable.

I often don’t know what to say, or I worry that I’ll say the wrong thing and then the worrying starts to make me nervous. Sometimes, I worry that I am going to run out of things to say to someone, resulting in that awkward silence that signals the death of a conversation. Or, I overthink the interactions, wondering what they’re thinking about while we’re talking or wondering if they like me, or if I like them. And then, because of all of the thinking I was doing, rather than paying attention, I end up noticing that I missed some of what they were saying and then I don’t know how to respond to what I didn’t hear them say.

So, needless to say, it’s complicated.

But, because of the job that I have, and because of some of the volunteer work that I do, I’ve had to pull up my big boy pants and learn to interact with people; I’ve had to try to get better at doing it. And, you know what the funny thing is about being made to do this thing that I don’t enjoy doing?

I’ve gotten better at it. And, it’s less uncomfortable than it used to be.

I still wouldn’t say that it’s my favorite thing in the world to do, but it’s not as bad as it used to be.

Not as uncomfortable.

* * *

And so…

If doing something helps us to get better, and also to become less uncomfortable, and if our world is crying out for us to start doing things better, and that work is often uncomfortable work, I guess we ought to get started doing the right thing more often than we do the comfortable thing.

For if we are truly at the place where the wrong thing is more comfortable to us than the right thing, I’m afraid of what that means for us all.