I sat this week in a class and listened with some resistance to what I was taught. The teacher, well-meaning though he may have been, presented as forgone conclusions that A will lead to B. Although I agree that it can, I do not like his premise, and he didn’t like it when I questioned his conclusions.
As a consequence however, of this resistance, I had a conversation with another class member. We discussed how perspective makes a great difference. Things are not always as they seem. For instance, it is less stressful for a worm to dig through the dirt than for it to go fishing. Likewise, it is not always better to see the glass as half full. Any waitress who regards your glass as always half full runs the risk of lower tips for lack of attentiveness to the beverage at hand. Another professor has a friend who was interviewed for a job in Tower 1 on 11 September 2001 but was not selected. If he had been, he would have been on the 70th floor filling out paperwork to start working when the plane collided with the tower. It was better he wasn't hired for that job!
Just because we can do a thing does not follow that we must. Just because something is true somewhere doesn’t mean it’s true everywhere. We like things to be easy, cut and dry, and quick, and so we like to wrap things up in pretty little packages because they look nice and stack more easily. Frequently, when something doesn’t conform to that hope, we dismiss it as irrelevant or unimportant because it’s inconvenient to the narrative to which we so desperately hope to cling. We take things we hope for laws while simultaneously hoping not to be taken in violation of the laws. We drive along the highway of life thinking the road belongs to us when sometimes even the car belongs to someone else.
When my local friend and I go hiking, he is frequently glad to have me along because I pay attention to the trail. He says many people get lost because they don’t look behind them to recognize the way out. Even this last weekend, he noticed a rock that has always been there but that the previous two occasions he completely missed because we went at it from a different direction. There are so many things we miss because we are accustomed and comfortable to seeing things in only one particular way.
I know that things are different from how they seem at first glance. When I was younger, my mother bought several series of books on virtues, values, and principles to entertain and educate us. In one volume of the Bernstein Bears, Mother Bear teaches Sister Bear about appearances. While she cuts up apples, Sister notices a misshapen apple that’s knobby and lopsided, and she assumes it’s a bad apple. However, when Mother cuts it open, the flesh of the fruit is perfect and wholesome. Mother finds another apple that looks perfect on the outside and cuts into it, only to reveal a rotting flesh where worms have made a home.
While stereotypes and assumptions are based on truth, it does not make them law. I have seen a lot of scientists extrapolate for the entire population information gleaned from only one or five individual representatives thereof. There are attitudes we adopt that hurt us and our human experience. I once had a coworker who confessed to me that she was glad she was forced to get to know me because she never would have chosen to get to know me. If not for circumstances, I would never have met any of them either, because I would have gladly gone into my chosen vocation more quickly than I did. I am often quick to do certain things, which are based on experiences, whereby I hold strangers accountable for the transgressions of others. I feel bad about this and endeavor to change my expectations.
That being said, what you are is more than what you say or even do. Just because you do something that is virtuous does not make you virtuous too. Jesus warned us about those who grudgingly give gifts or those hypocrites who do things for the wrong reasons. What you are depends largely on your motivation and energy. There are things I would like to do differently, but since I like where I have arrived, it would only serve to upset where I am and put me at risk of losing things I prefer to keep as they are. All too frequently, we are interested in to do lists, which are about accomplishments rather than on to be lists, which focus on transformation of our personae. When your actions back up your words, we can have a conversation. Until then, I reject the premise and look for truth.
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