Perception For Good

Mankind is often unkind to mankind.  Note that the word often has been used here.  Society is something of a stew, made up of many ingredients, and often ingredients not used by the masses to make up their preferred society.  Individuals are formed in their own stew, made up by ingredients – some added from these sources and some from those sources.  Biology contributes its share.  Nationality, emotion, acquaintances and other factors, even language, participate in the collection and mixing of the ingredients.  Education and experience add and subtract along the way.  The result is sometimes edible and tasty, sometimes neither.  Almost always it is appreciated by some and rejected by others.  There is usually the feeling the stew might be improved with this factor added and that one removed.  Even in agreement there are usually adjustments that are preferred.  We are, on occasion, resistant to even that we preferred and for varying reasons.  Our current experiences are such that, at least for now, the stew is not tasty.  I have a friend who setting out on a hunting foray prepared his favorite stew, originated by him.  It has appeared in cook books.  I had bowed out of the hunting week-end, and we were in a far country, so he prepared enough to cover my needs until he returned with his guide, who turned out to be an uncertain nimrod.  The stew was magnificent, but on his return he would have none of it.  The miserable weather, difficult terrain, absence of game, clumsiness of the guide, vehicle failure was taken out on the cold stew in a snow storm. When he returned he would throw out the stew I valued.  He, like Israel, lost interest in the gift of manna.

The above illustrates much of our lives.  We are a stew of likes and dislikes – of poor and good habits, of patience and impatience, of prejudices and acceptances, of favors and disfavors, of reaction and problem solving and so the story goes.  The misery is really not in all this, but in the way we follow our own menu and treat another’s menu with disdain.  Life is more marked by this contradiction than with major issues that we face in the course of our years.  We even create unhappiness between mates, between children and parents, between workers with workers, and workers with bosses – and so the story continues through politics, education, religion, business, and just about any relationship we have with other persons.

I know married couples who in their inner-most beings love each other, but we would never know it in that they have been distracted by the surface matters of the personal life stew.  They have all kinds of explanations for the differences, but no solutions and no meaningful conversation to good ends.  They don’t have chemistry, or they are too busy, or they believe the other of the twain is misunderstanding, or hard to live with. That list too can be extended – lengthy.  As a counselor I see two fine persons, decent in life and to others who have the same ingredients in their stews.  The paradoxes and contradictions prove that we do not mature sufficiently, that we do not adequately understand human experience, and that we are objecting to God for making even some of his most careful children offer troublesome presence.

Among the blessings God has given to us is accident, ill health, poor circumstance, storms and miseries.  In the news today there appeared the story of a person utterly amazed at the extra effort a number of persons put forward to help a man injured in an accident.  If we knew the injured fellow, we might not like him.  We might walk by on the other side.  These helpers objectified themselves to the injured man.  He may have done something stupid.  It didn’t make any difference.  He was hurting, and he is a human being.  Together they fought his hurt.  We notice also how ugly some persons can be to others, even to those who are intimate to their lives – as the counselor sees the context.  They have everything, and they act as though they have little or nothing, or that they should be treated, not for what they find others are and the individual human experience to be, but for what they believe themselves to be – persons of privilege.  I am on my way when I can manage differences in persons, sometimes with a splash of humor, so to express love, not only to friends and family, but even to enemies or who appear to be near enemies to my life.  I want to follow Jesus Christ who accepted persons in their own stews – with love, even service to them.  Our lives are made up of the one (individual) and the many (groupings).  Some persons are good at the one and not the other.