Several people have asked to share this comment I made so I’m Making it a post;

On vaccines;

Vaccine conspiracies, like all conspiracies, are an effort on our part to grab onto something controllable. We don’t want our kids to end up with some learning disability or medical issue or autism. But by and large these things are genetic and environmental and out of our control and just *happen* no matter how much we love our kids.

We see it every day; a kid struggling with autism, or suddenly getting cancer, or some mysterious illness. And it’s so unfair and scary!

But we don’t see measles and rubella and pertussis every day. In fact, I’ve never known a child who got any of those my whole life!

So we have a visible enemy; autism, cancer, mystery and danger And one that doesn’t even seem real; “measles” “mumphs” “pertussis.” I mean, they are just boogeymen to me. At 42, never seen any of them! 

So what if i had control to stop those visible enemies that I see and am afraid of, merely by refusing to fight those invisible boogeymen that I’ve never heard of anyone getting?

That would be a huge comfort! I could protect my child from all kind of things with a little decision. 

No wonder it’s so tempting. It’s meant to be.

We desperately want the bad guy to be something we can fight because, “a million factors we don’t understand and can’t control” isn’t an enemy we can do a thing about. I want to fight a shot, or a con trail, or a company with a name and a sign, not genetics and unknown contributors! I can’t fight that!

And that’s, the golden Apple. Accept this fruit, we’ll call it control, and feel better about the world. Feel like you can save your children from things you see other kids get. Feel smart and powerful. 

Because we aren’t powerful. We’re mostly helpless and we desperately want power. 

Letting go of conspiracy and accepting evidence is terrifying because all that evidence leads you to; you can’t stop all bad things from happening no matter what you do. 

You can put of your seatbelt, and get the vaccines, and go to the dentist (where btw you’ll be way more exposure to chemicals, radiation, and heavy metals than all your vaccines combined) and you can hedge your bets against a few things we know are dangerous but there’s little protection against others. 

Accepting that life is fragile and dangerous and we can’t protect our children from it all hurts so much. 

It’s the greatest exercise in Buddhism and meditation I’ve ever known. “I breathe and know, i am limited in what i can do for my child.”