Who Exactly Is They??

Posted on March 16, 2014 Updated on April 21, 2014

The other day I was relaxing with a few girlfriends over a glass (or bottles) of wine.  We were talking about life and we started to get a little philosophical.   The conversation was riveting or maybe it was just the wine.  We were talking about marriage, the challenges of raising our little rascals, work, money and growing older.  During our talks one of us made the statement “Well ya know what they always say about that” and it got me thinking of the most important question of all- Who the hell is “They”?

I had said this simple statement many times in my life without ever really thinking about it much. “Ya know what they say…”, “Everyone says they said so” or “They say you can’t do that”   Who gave “They” all the power? Are they the politicians? Are they the educators? Are they the CEO’s? Are they the media? Are they the preachers or are “they” just something we all made up to convince ourselves of what we already believe anyway? Did we just make up “they” so we would stay in our own box and behave?

What’s great about “they” is we can make it anything we want.  We can use it in a debate to try to sway people over to our beliefs. They implies “many” which means we aren’t alone so we must be right.  We can use it to justify our behavior.  Obviously if many says it’s O.K. then it must be a grand idea. We can use it to tell people their behavior is bad.  If many believe it’s bad then it must be horrid.

The funny part about “they” is that in reality there is a “they” for every reason or every cause known to man.  Since there are billions of people on the planet there is a “they” for everything.  With so many humans running around with our (what they call) large brains, it’s pretty ridiculous to believe that any of us every really have a novel or new thought. There’s probably some bored woman in China writing this same blog right now.  Now I’m not saying that’s not scary- cuz trust me- the idea of anyone out there with a brain as twisted as mine is even petrifying to me, but it’s probably true.  Y’all are just lucky and can’t read Mandarin.

After thinking about “THEY” for a while I’ve decided the most important thing to know about “they” is it’s just an illusion. Don’t listen to “they”- listen to yourself and know there are other people out there just as normal or nuts as you. Some of “they” won’t like you and some of “they” will love you, but the best part of all is most of “they” won’t really care either way.