Hello Reader
Of course you are right, but—
Got second opinion?
From the 1970’s come two TV characters from two shows, All in the Family and Happy Days—The bigoted father, Archie Bunker, and the cool “bad” motorcyclist with his white T-shirt and leather jacket, “the Fonze.” They had something in common: Both would get lockjaw trying to say, “I was w-w-w-wrong.” Same as my dear brother-in-law. Recently I’ve been looking in the mirror…
Even that epitome of cool, the Fonze, ( raising his thumbs to affirm, “Ehhhh!”) couldn’t be right all the time, no, not even in fanciful TV land. In my everyday world, it would be such a comfort to believe everyone has common sense, and that “of course everybody knows” common things—but no. There is a good reason why newspapers and traditional media, on a continuing Big Important Story, on each successive day, must retread the same old ground, and keep on repeating what has just happened. People don’t always know. Maybe “they should” but the plain truth is they don’t.
People are like some chunks in a box of cold cereal: After lots of shaking around by life, every chunk “should” be the same size, but there are always a few big pieces that seem to have slipped through the process. To me, every one of us are “big chunks:” We all seem to have “missed out” on different things, having gaps in our knowledge. Why? Easy: we live in a complex society.
It’s so common to miss out on common things: I’m still chuckling over my friend, a university graduate, who didn’t know the “dirty thirties” were caused by the Wall Street stock market crash of late 1929. She innocently thought the Great Depression was caused by the mid-west “dust bowl.”
(My principal told us how a farmer would plow a field all day, then, during the night, lose every last teaspoon of his topsoil, gone with the wind)
Respect for human nature, and for ordinary ethical journalism, is why my essays will have abbreviations spelled in full, explanations in brackets, and even the odd “as you know, comma.” I do this to be gentle on my readers. In school we took a short story about (from memory) The Man From Kalgoorlie who managed to go an entire year without knowing World War II had broken out. Yes, that’s only fiction, but stranger things have happened.
(As you may know, the war started September 1, 1939, when the Germans, as part of the Axis powers, invaded Poland. Canada declared war on September third, and the First Canadian Division was in Britain later that year… The attack on Pearl Harbor, by some different fascists, was not until December 7, 1941. At least the major fascist countries learned a lesson. I can’t speak for smaller axis countries like, say, Italy or Romania, but I know that today Germany and Japan are peaceful to a fault)
Any remedy? Yes, a partial one: Listening, as humbly as I can, from knowing I surely have gaps. It’s not rocket science. The Chinese say, “When you go outdoors, look at the weather; when you come indoors, look at the faces.” While I am talking, I modestly check faces to see if I have abruptly sounded like an idiot. That is, unless we are imbibing and gesturing wildly in a pub—then we can all be idiots together.
In a social group, whether I’m flocking with delinquents on a street corner or hooting with a parliament of owls, it’s common sense: Don’t assume a motion or topic is worth discussing unless there is figuratively a seconder to the motion. And here’s another common sense metaphor: As a sailor, I don’t assume my “sea story” is worth telling to a crowd of sailors relaxing in the fo’c’s’le. Not unless I have first tested it on the ship’s cook, and then secretly lingered outside the hatch, to check to hear whether he tells it to the next fellow to enter the galley. (footnote)
The only thing you can’t test out is how to break bad news. A dozen mountain ranges away lived my dad. A few days after the death of dear old dad, my sweet sibling let me know. Some days later my friend Judy had a disturbed face: She just had to get back to me to ask why getting the news took a few days: “Is your family estranged?”
“No, just slow.”
(How slow? Dear Mom passed away later, in the summer of 2016, and today, Easter of 2019, with two of my slow siblings as co-executors, there is no sign yet of any estate money for us chickens. It’s no big deal—at least the taxes, submitted around Easter of 2018, have finally been done, I think)
As for estrangement, I once skimmed a link on the web. Turns out folks can be estranged, can be giving a relative the silent treatment for years and years, while at the same time the relative doesn’t know about the treatment, let alone know why. I can relate: Certainly I can hold a grudge for a long, long time without the other person having a clue. That may be OK for acquaintances, but for family? That would be too dumb. And too unworthy of me. Theoretically.
And yet… I can remember telephoning my father across many mountain ranges to his time zone to ask, in effect, whether our family believes that just one thing can be “a deal killer,” as in being “not good enough to love.” I know, right? Shouldn’t have to ask, right? And yet I had felt so degraded, keeping shameful and silent about my family, as my bank manager remarked that even Jesse James, after robbing trains, was loved by his folks.
There’s a good reason for the Good News story in the New Testament about a prodigal son. There’s another Gospel story, nearly two thousand years old now, of a man washing his hands and asking, “What is truth?”
The truth is that if I am especially ashamed and keeping silent about some notion I have, then I am especially needful to ask someone, anyone, for a “seconder to the notion.” Not asking my bar tender, who may solely listen, but asking someone who will answer my truth with his or her own truth. Perhaps by saying, “Yes, yes I do think you are wrong… being silly… and wrong.” How easy to be told I’m wrong about some exciting tavern trivia game, how very hard, something to be approached with fear and trembling, to be told I have been wrong about a close relative who has—which is “had” in the present tense—severely hurt my feelings. So often the “easy way out” is to feel offended, not hurt.
Something about offended anger is this: It’s always there, waiting, even if I change my mind about people. Like a hand-eye coordinated sports move, it remains to be called on, years later. Like how “everybody knows” that the same folks who have known peace since the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement would shoot and bomb and kill if tomorrow a customs “hard border” appeared across Ireland after Brexit. How queer: A baby born on Good Friday of that year would be 21 years old now…
How tragic when nations who have strained and strived and finally achieved peace can just throw it all away, abruptly surrendering to an impulse for hatred. The capacity for anger remains. Today I desperately need my higher reasoning to know that life has moved on, that it’s silly, and that my old thinking, today, is something I was w-w-w-wrong about.
Today I’m avoiding my mirror… yet I just had to write, for me and you.
Sean Crawford
Trying not to subconsciously rebel about de-cluttering,
April
2019
Footnotes:
~The sea story advice is from novelist Jan De Hartog in his nonfiction book, A Sailor’s Life. (You may download the book for free as a PDF, link)
~Some folks get their opinions from social media and false news. That’s a problem: The consensus is that social media is, too often, easily and wrongly forwarded by deniers of media ethics, just as as easily as folks will spread false gossip. For the journalism ethics practised by true ladies and gentlemen, see my three journalism essays archived in May and April of 2018.
Note to my Irish-American cousins: You might snobbishly feel superior to the British Irish for their reverting to violence from seeing a “hard border,” (customs police in grim buildings) but hey, have you looked in the mirror?
You and your pals wear flowers in your hair for a street protest, swearing up and down to each other that your march will be “a peaceful demonstration…” But then you riot… and the next morning? You tell news reporters it was the mere sight of hard armoured riot police that “made you riot.” Does that sound very adult of you, “they made me riot”? So don’t you go feeling superior to the Northern Irish.
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