Last week was rather exhausting for me, so I'm relaxing in bed before heading for the gym in a little while, and one of those pictures caught my eye. It shows my wife and me in the ocean at a stingray experience in the Bahamas. I went primarily for her sake, but the experience was enjoyable enough.
At one point everyone was given a chance to touch a stingray. I politely declined. Then the kind of thing I can never understand happened:
The event organizer, along with the other attendees, started insisting I do it, thinking that maybe I was frightened or nervous. Nope, just don't want to. I have no idea what difference what I do makes to anyone else there, but man did they want me to. They insisted again. Again, I politely declined. I did not make a spectacle of myself, I wasn't a drama queen about it, nothing. I simply declined.
For some reason this episode left my wife very impressed. She couldn't believe I had simply stood my ground. From then on, whenever there's been pressure on me from any group at all to do something I prefer not to do, she recalls the episode with the stingray. Sometimes people hear about an incident like this and wonder if I'm just a contrarian by nature -- particularly given my views on politics and many other subjects. But I'm not.
However, doing the opposite of what's expected of me has generally served me well.
~ Tom Woods, March 25, 2024
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