You know what a lemming is? Let me just say that my mother would NEVER let me be a lemming – she’d always say, “If your friends were all jumping off the Empire State Building, would you jump, too?” Lemmings wouldn’t hesitate. It’s actually a myth, but the myth says that if all the other lemmings were running towards a cliff, the entire pack of them would all fall off the cliff and not one single lemming would stand up and say, “Hey, wait just a minute…”

(here’s the classic Gary Larsen cartoon):

And yet, I see a shocking number of people who just blindly agree to whatever someone in authority is telling them. Hey – if someone asked you where do you find Vitamin C, what would you say? Oranges, right? OK – how do you know that? Who told you that? Those ads, right? The ones from the orange growers? My point exactly. Hey, the dairy lobby is doing the same thing – we drink more milk in this country than any other first world country, and have more osteoporosis and cavities. And is anyone standing up and saying, “Hey, wait just a minute…”

Of course, if they did, they’d probably immediately be labeled a quack.

A lot of being a lemming is driven by inertia. It’s definitely easier to roll over and give up than it is to stand up and say NO. Take going to the doctor – the white coat says, “You need to take these medications.” And so people do – rarely asking for how long, or what they could do to get off them, or checking in later to see if they still need to be on them. Or what bad things could happen to them if they kept taking them and not relying on the doctor to tell them but looking it up themselves.

It’s everywhere – take those books on dating, the ones that tell women that they should always agree with the man, and they shouldn’t have strong opinions, and to practice being demure and understated. ARE YOU SERIOUS? That’s lemming graduate school right there.

It’s everywhere. The talking heads on the TV. Or the CEO of the corporations. Or the newspapers/magazines – everywhere, there are people telling us the “truth”. God knows what I’ll be like in 20 years, but I question nearly everything without proof. I WANT PROOF. And I want an alternate opinion for everything. (OK, I trust my car mechanic but he’s the only one ;-) ) And I want someone else telling me, too – not just you.

So start asking questions! Start checking things for yourself, start asking for other opinions, start thinking for yourself.

You don’t have to be a lemming. I sure as hell am not.