Meet Ric Wasley

Things your Mama told you ... but were you paying attention?

Musings from Ric Wasley

Remember how your Mama told you to "sit up straight, eat your broccoli and if you can't something nice, don't say anything at all."
That last one has been kind of tough to follow hasn't it?
Yeah, me too.

I mean it would be a whole lot easier to be nice if the world wasn’t just chock full of jerks wouldn't it? And it always seems that those "jerks" are constantly doing annoying things to tick us off.
You know what I'm talking about. It's those "jerks" that are always listening to the music we hate and voting for those other jerk politicians that we despise. And to make matters worse, when we try and give these "jerks" the benefits of our very well thought out and reasonable points of view these "jerks" not only don't appreciate the clarity of our insightful logic ... they've actually got the nerve to argue with us... Jerks!

And so we go from childhood to old age, fully convinced that We are right and all those who don't believe as we do are not only wrong and uniformed but... 'jerks".

Well they must be, right? After all we are intelligent and scholarly so why wouldn't any reasonable person like what we like and believe as we believe?

This puzzled me too. Until one day while engaged in a philosophical debate it suddenly occurred to me - do you suppose that this guy believes in his cause and is just as convinced of its virtue as I am of mine?

And guess what?
I found that to contemplate that others who don't believe as we do may have just as valid opinion and point of view is one of the hardest things that we Homo Sapiens ever have to contend with.
Compared to allowing your fellow humans their own unique perspective and accepting it as valid is for most of us, harder than swimming the English Channel encased in full plate amour and more morally trying than following Mother Theresa into to slums of Calcutta.
Send me off to Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition but please, please don't force me to admit that one of those benighted fools who doesn't share my world view might just be ... right.

Yeah. And I, like maybe you, am one of the worst offenders.
So can I get a big, "Amen" for all of us who have come to this hard truth?
And maybe we should remember one more thing that momma told us...
"Live and let live."