Consistently Inconsistent

Consistently InConsistent

John Paul Derryberry

There were a couple of skill sets and traits that determined my ceiling as a basketball player. First, I'm not fast, and I can't jump too high, both very much needed on the basketball court. Also, it is essential to shoot the ball pretty consistently, so it goes through the hoop. That's the whole point of the game, to score more than the other team. Finally, I love the game of basketball, and it still remains in the top five of things I love to do. So if a slow, can't jump, and can't shoot guy had any chance of getting onto the court, I had to be good at something.

So I got good and learning the angles, rotations, and the flow of the basketball game. I could consistently anticipate the action and get a head start to counter my concrete feet. Always play as hard as possible for as long as possible. Just being in the right spot at the right time leads to good results. That type of consistently allowed me to play basketball against people I had no business being on the court with. This unathletic guy stayed on the court longer than he should have by leaning into the one thing, I could be excellent at; Consistency.

It's something we are missing currently in our culture. We seem to be venturing into a society that values constantly changing the rules to be correct instead of admitting we were misguided. Instead of allowing the facts to guide us to a solution, we have taken the tactic of stating our opinion and then working backward to find the information to back us up. As a result, we have become the thing we cannot become, consistently inconsistent. In one breath, a group will claim it's not my body, my choice, when it comes to abortion, but in the next breath, it is my body, my choice, when it's about the vaccine. The same is if the opinions are reserved in the thought process, if you think the vaccine should be mandatory, you are venturing off your normal decision making process. And both lines of thinking affect potential futures live greatly. In similar situations we are talking about the value of life, we forget to consistently apply the same tests and come up with wildly different answers.

I get that the pandemic is stressing the limits of problem-solving in society. I also understand numerous life situations come with many add-on statements about how this situation is slightly different from the next. Abortion and vaccines aren't apples to apples in the comparison department. Still, they are close enough to show how we fail to make logical and thoughtful decisions about numerous topics. We would rather shout into the void than admit new information has caused us to rethink our previous stance on health choices individuals must make.

Here lies the problem of being consistently inconsistent; you become untrustworthy as a person. The words you use lose their value because if presented with information to the contrary, the following twisting and contorting of the facts makes you not a serious person. It means your only game to solve the problem is how you see it, not the way the whole society sees it. I'm not interested in selfish problem solvers. I've been around enough of those in my day to realize it's never enough for them. And that's not a democracy; that's something scary, something we can't count on.

Maybe that's the problem that has been laid bare by the pandemic. The years of leaders being inconsistent to fit their world narratives can't escape a virus that cares not of narratives. We all follow a path to make decisions. We would all do a little better if we stuck to the course even when the answer we arrive at doesn't jive with what we thought should happen. Sometimes we are supposed to allow live occurrences to change us for the better. If we do something like that long enough, we might find we can consistently become a better person. And, wouldn't that make the world a better place?