I found your post comments while searching Google. Very relevant especially as this is not an issue which a lot of peaople are conversant with….

I’m sure you are familiar w/ this common life metaphor associated w/ the tiny prairie dog-like creatures aimlessly following each other to their death, but for me as a child, this was quite a different lesson than my peers were receiving at home.

As a 4th grader, while kids were worried about doing things like everyone else, I was taught not to follow aimlessly, w/out reason, and w/out understanding of “why I was following”. This mindless behavior of following w/out intent was clearly archaic, and one that would most certainly make “me, his pride and joy, the legacy of his name” extinct.

Well, I learned a lot from my father’s humor/lesson’s and to this day I still frequently call people out as “being a lemming”. I am amazed how people become paralyzed in “fear”, not fear of anything real/tangible, merely the “fear to be different”, “fear to realize that their thoughts are meaningful”, “fear to admit that they may know more than their boss”, “fear to make mistakes”, and “fear for their job” (even though I have never heard of anyone being fired for making “out of the norm” comments as long as they back it up w/ recommendations/facts). All and all, life is too short to skate by in the wake of our lemming predecessors..