For me, the most recent example of this came this last Sunday when I was in attendance at our ward's fast & testimony meeting. I was blandly mostly paying attention to the testimonies when a young mother in our ward stood up and began to bear a simple yet sweet testimony. And yet, I was totally distracted by something she said right at the beginning of her testimony; she said something to the effect of, "I don't know a whole lot of big words, but I'd like to bear my testimony..."
It was a really stupid reason to get hung up, but I did. I thought about why she could possibly want to admit to not knowing big words, and I thought about how much my estimation of her suddenly went down. I've never even talked with this sister, but suddenly I found myself thinking she was a bit of a dummy. When her husband bore his testimony towards the end of the meeting, I was struck with how intelligently he spoke, and I wondered if this created an inequality in their relationship--he was intellectual, and she wasn't.
It was then that I realized how much importance I was giving to the ability to speak intelligently. It's as if I had decided to myself that the only real virtue was intelligence, and that the only real measure of intelligence is the ability to use language well.
I mean, how prejudiced and illogical is that?!? I was ashamed of myself when I realized what I was doing, and yet I still couldn't entirely shake the feeling that I just couldn't admire this woman as much as I would if she had a large vocabulary.
So, *sighs and leans back into easy chair*, what moral lesson can I learn from this experience? What valuable improvement can I make in myself? Well, I think I'm more or less over the feeling now, and I hope that in future I'll be less inclined to make such a quick and absolute judgement call based on such little information. I think the important thing for me at this point is to recognize the validity and importance of all good characteristics in people. Not only is intelligence not the only virtue, it's also far from being the most important one. Maybe I'll focus more on seeing kindness in others, or honesty, or courage.
Maybe I'll also start designing motivational posters with pictures of people windsurfing, or sticking their heads into a lion's mouth, and phrases like: "Intelligence is not the only virtue," printed beneath it.
(Is that enough philosophizing and self-preaching for one entry?) Anyways, thanks for listening. Well, 'listening,' I suppose. And for not throwing aged tomatoes.
P.S. Do you think this picture would work for a poster?
4 comments:
Of course, this begs the question as to whether knowing a lot of big words really is intelligence. I also wonder what the woman meant by big words; for me, a big word is "chthonic" (pertaining to the underworld; I have no idea how that's pronounced) or "coruscating" (sparkling). Of course, I'm surrounded by gigantic medical terms all of the time, so my sense of word size is a bit off. For other people a big word is "idiosyncratic" or "incandescent" (of course, those are in my daily vocabulary ;)). And for other people, a big word is "root beer".
Can I place an advance order for some of those motivational posters? They might be useful for my classroom walls which are sadly bare. How about a picture of a perfectly folded paper airplane soaring towards the back of a teacher's head? Or twenty pencils stuck in a ceiling? Or a spit wad hitting it's target right between the eyes? I think it would really boost my students' self-esteem and make them feel good about what they've accomplished so far this year. Intelligence is not the only virtue.
Of course knowing a lot of big words isn't really intelligence. There's no question--I was just being dumb. That's really what I was trying to say--that the way we measure other people is usually complete poot. (Sorry, Emily. I just had to use the word.)
Anyway--sorry. I've gone off on this subject way too much, and I'm actually glad you guys took the time to read through the whole posting. I thought it was a little dull. :^P
Um, and Becca, suuuuure... you can place preorders for some posters...I'll just print off a couple now...*Runs off and starts frantically fiddling with Photoshop*
Well, I certainly hope that being able to correctly use the word "chthonic" in a sentence isn't the test for intelligence. Because if it is....I'll have to start memorizing the dictionary. As far as basing your life's worth on the number of pencils you successfully stuck in the ceiling of math class goes..hopefully that's not a good measure either. I don't think I've ever even tried. But I do think its a good idea to look for everyone's special gifts and talents. One of my mission companions always said we should "look for the divine in everyone." She was really good at this (Sometimes I don't even want to be good at this...mostly because I have serious attitude problems). She could always find some divine residue, something that must be a characterisitic of God as well. She was a very happy person looking at life and people this way, partly because this helped her see the divine in herself as well. We all know how hard that can be sometimes.
Post a Comment