March Madness, a multi-week sporting event involving collegiate basketball teams, is an annual reminder to me that so much of our culture is the way it is simply because “We all decided to.”
We all decided it was important to have an opinion on collegiate basketball.
We all decided you have to have a favorite state school. (U of M vs. MSU in my town can be rabid.)
We all decided to learn certain dances, to watch certain shows, to dress certain ways.
In short, we are made of a tapestry of things we all decided to do – and not all bad! We all decided to have ubiquitous electrical and water infrastructure! We all decided to have universal secondary education!
But when we forget that all of these things are decisions, and that we don’t have to follow a particular decision if we don’t want to, then we end up going through motions and not being true to our own selves.
And that’s why I’m thankful for NCAA Hockey Basketball. Oops.