Democratic VP candidate Walz is right — we mind our own business, but we also care for and help each other
I grew up on a farm outside a town roughly half the size of the one where Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz grew up. Everyone knew one another’s business and we also knew how to mind our own. But don’t mistake that for meaning we didn’t know how to take care of our own.
When we had a spare generator and Dad knew a young family didn’t, we ran it over to them and made sure they could run it. He served on the school board and church committees and the irrigation association with people he disagreed with on quite a few things.
The thing they agreed on was keeping our little community alive. How did they do it? By looking after neighbors. Even — especially — the ones who were difficult. Mind your own damn business is a philosophy that means you can help someone without needing them to agree with you on everything.
There are big ideas we needed to get behind, and we did. But if you prayed differently at your house or your family looked different, that didn’t affect us (and our way didn’t need to be your way).
Mind your business doesn’t mean you pretend not to see differences. It means you acknowledge them and the truth that everyone ought to be able to choose the best, healthiest choices for themselves.
Are they harming you? No? Mind your business. Do your thing. Understand they have the right to do theirs. Everyone’s freedom extends as far as the next person’s nose.
Your business doesn’t allow you to make a choice that hurts someone else. It is simple and subtle all at once. What I know is when Dad died very unexpectedly, with a new air drill in the Quonset and all the seed and herbicide purchased for spring work, some of the people who also disagreed with him took time away from their fields to plant his. They wouldn’t let Mom pay them for their time.
They wouldn’t even fuel up at the pumps in our yard — they burned their diesel to get across our acres. They knew what it meant for her if they didn’t. By fall, our heads were on a little straighter. Mom hired the harvest and had an equipment sale.
Guess who showed up? Neighboring is an activity. It’s a fine line between minding your business and making sure others are all right.
I can’t tell you what it means to see someone who understands all that standing and accepting the Democratic vice-presidential nomination. Someone (Walz is seen above visiting a Minnesota steel plant last July in a public domain photo posted on wikimedia commons) who will be a team with the first woman president for our nation. And I do not want to learn how despondent I will be if our neighbors reject that for all of us.
We need more people like him in government. That’s the point. Minnesota, our neighbors to the east, got enough people like that in their state government to cut taxes and provide lunch for schoolchildren and secure parental leave. Those all directly improve lives.
Tim Walz and people like him backed historic spending on public K-12 & early-childhood education. They approved the North Star Promise program. It covers tuition and fees for Minnesota families earning less than $80,000 a year.
Those are investments in community. That’s looking after neighbors.
Jennifer S. Hyk is a thoughtful writer, coach-you-up editor, and process geek always searching for the best answer to what a guy oughta do and the smartest way to do it. Born and raised in rural Conde, she earned her degree in mass communication from the University of South Dakota. She covered cultural affairs, government, health, and education for the Argus Leader before shifting to community development, nonprofit fundraising, and communications work for local and national organizations. She and her husband are raising two men in the biggest little city in South Dakota. Find her and her work at jennifershyk.com online.
