Self Symbols

Thomas Edison once mildly shocked his associates when he introduced an important staff meeting with the question: How many light posts are there between the door of our building and the street curb? As I recall the response was that none of these brilliant persons knew the correct answer.  Edison responded by saying that their attention and alertness was lacking for the job of discovering and developing the currently unknown facts important to the advancement of the programs he and they had designed.  He was focusing on a factor that is seldom, if ever, mentioned in either our daily lives or formal education.  We have little sayings that have been used related to the matter, such as: He is so dumb that he stumbles over his shadow.  The dumbbell doesn’t decipher what is substantive and what is not.  This Page seeks to stimulate greater understanding of this important factor of personal symbolism in our lives and that of others.

What is symbolic of my person?  How do persons interpret the manner of my dress, my face, my attitude, and my way of expressing self?  I know they tend to shift their conduct and attitude toward me because I am old.  People tend to treat old people well in the passing of everyday and short contacts.  They read the signs, and tend to give the elderly their best side.  I suppose they perceive themselves old and in the future, hoping for sensitive treatment when they reach the slopes.  I am disappointed when persons, not understanding the need for encouragement and reinforcement for life, offer negative thoughts to others.  Persons who are ill have no need to be reminded that they have lost too much weight, looking skinny unto death. They already know that.  Not enough can be said for the person, who carries a smile, can engage small talk, can look past the negatives of our lives and offer an inspiriting episode for the moments that waft through the day.  To carry in our persons the affirmatives of life, even in the small contacts of our days, becomes an aid to the ministry to others for their sense of worth and comfort.  We enjoy and are truly benefitted by their exchange with us.  One of the greatest compliments I ever received came from a husband of a woman who was nearly always negative about this or that factor in this or that person or situation, but I would kid her out of the malaise that seemed always to surround her.  She would fall back.  Toward the end of her life, when I would call on her, she would say: You are a sight for sore eyes.  She knew I was going to work on her better side, and was not put off by her negatives.  Other persons would avoid contact with her, but they could have lifted her unless they were overcome by her negative ways.

It is important to our own acceptance that we become symbols for the best contexts in life.  Christianity is an affirmative life-style, and should be demonstrated in self-expression.  Negatives grow out of the affirmatives because there are two sides to the coin.  The derelict looks like a derelict in his hygiene, dress, language, and other factors, but he also has a bit of life dignity.  The reasons for his dereliction have nothing to do with the responsibility I have to minister to him, in personal and spiritual interests.  Derelicts have been known to turn away from persons who sincerely want to help, because the helper is perceived as a symbol of someone way up here trying to help someone way down there.  They would rather accept the inconveniences of their situation than to honor the servant who seems to them to be patronizing. Each person ought to know what will make him or her become an affirmative symbol to others.  That symbol will serve to raise the perceptions and conducts of others – not all but some.  That is what we want to do.  In this pattern there is modeling, which is an important factor in Christianity – to be a model of Christ.  That occurs in what may be seen as unimportant matters as well as important.  When Jesus took time with the sick man let down from the roof top for his attention, and when we are informed of his response, we forget the presumption of an uninvited break in an important exchange with others.  When the women broke into a meeting with their children, and Jesus gave meaning to the incursion, we learn something of the symbol of Jesus.  He kept important men waiting while he took the children, put them on his lap, and blessed them – perhaps one by one.  That took time, and invited some grumbling from the male audience.  Jesus had become a positive symbol and the mothers knew it.  Life is found in the accumulation of little things in our experiences.  We need help in weaving threads into the whole fabric of life.