There is a saying that everyone you meet has something to teach you.
I collect sayings like that, in just the same way I read self-improvement books. This is because I have spent the latter part of my life, since I turned 50, say, trying to become a good person.
But there’s another saying: You can’t turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse. I think maybe we all just get born with a certain ratio of naughty to nice. Blame genes or blame God, depending on your belief system; but if you’re composed of 50 percent piss and the other part vinegar there’s no way the whole shebangs is ever going to resemble Mother Teresa. Oh, you can pass for a while but the first time hungry children assemble worshipfully at your feet and you kick them aside because they’re blocking the liquor store, you can kiss your chances of canonization goodbye.
Me, I’m trying really hard, and since I began on my journey toward enlightenment I’ve noticed that everyone I meet actually does have a lesson for me. But such is my piss-&-vinegar-to-milk-of-human-kindness quotient that sometimes the mystic message seems to be is: DON’T BE LIKE ME, I’M A STEAMIN’ PILE OF HUMAN EXCREMENT. I mean, there’s yet another saying that there’s some good in everyone but I swear! Some people’s one virtue appears to be that they’re walking cautionary tales.
Anyway, here it is Christmas and I don’t have the money to buy you all presents. So what I thought I’d give you instead is a few of the mystic lessons I’ve learned from actual people right here in our community—though I will change the names to protect the innocent, and myself from litigation.
“Felicity” told me about her failed marriage: Her husband had left her for another woman, leaving her with their infant child to raise by herself, and she’d had to fight for every dime of child support, to the point she’d finally given up. But now she was not only a happy person, cheerfully busy with exercise, the outdoors, art, social change—everything from meditation to cake decorating!—she was also good friends with her ex, eager to share the joy of grandparenthood with him.
How could she forgive him? What she told me was: “I didn’t want to grow into a bitter old woman.”
That was a good lesson for an old sourpuss like me. I hadn’t known you had a choice! I was still residually pissed about a fight I’d had with my spouse about a Dairy Queen hot dog in 1983.
So the message here is: It’s not about whether the other person deserves forgiveness; it’s about whether you want to remain angry. (And in my case, it wasn’t adultery; hell, it wasn’t even a chilidog!) Let it go!
That was a long, milk-of-human-kindness message. Here’s a short P&V one: The lesson I took recently from a woman I brush up against in the community from time to time, whether I like it or not, like a ship being tossed onto a coral reef, is: DON’T CUT YOUR HAIR LIKE MINE! (It is always possible to get uglier.)
And here’s a simple message I probably shouldn’t even have to list here, but some people never seem to learn and anyway journalism is partially about pointing out the obvious: IF YOU WANT PEOPLE TO BELIEVE YOU, DON’T TELL WHOPPERS.
I’m gullible for a journalist. The reporter's rule is, if your mother says she loves you, check it out. But I can’t help my beautiful trusting nature and one time when someone told me, “Hey! I don’t play! I failed recess!” it was months before I figured out he was making a joke. (And even then it was because it suddenly struck me recess wasn’t graded.)
But as it happens I accidentally caught a man in the public part of my life and a woman in the private portion in similarly flagrant, self-contradictory lies. I had trusted them both implicitly, so figuring out they were deliberately lying to me made me feel not just stupid but slapped—and now I don’t believe either one of them if they tell me it’s Tuesday.
I’m sure there are all sorts of good reasons for fibbing—I sense in my case people sometimes just go for “whatever will get The Planet off my back”—but not if, in politics or in relationships, you want to be believed. Take your choice!
Next: I met a tiny little old lady at a party a few years ago who taught me something about jealousy. She was gloriously dressed in floating pinks, yellows and greens and she told me wonderful tales about her long, arty life. There were some sad parts, including, like Felicity’s tale above, an unfaithful husband, but like Felicity she had gone on her way rejoicing. “If you marry a handsome man,” she informed me matter-of-factly, “you can expect other women to want him, too.”
I was impressed, and, because she was the kind of person who would understand, I told her thanks, that was obviously the mystic message the universe has sent me to this particular party at this precise moment in time to receive.
Just then my spouse wandered up to collect me and I introduced him. “Aha,” she said knowingly. “You’ve got a handsome husband.”
(My milk-of-human-kindness side smiled gratefully. But my P&V side was grinning sardonically and quipping: How did she know I wasn’t after someone else’s?)
Another pearl o': There’s a man I know who constantly strives to do good in the world, and his feelings are always getting hurt when he gets so little recognition for it. Me, at first I would get a little bored of him talking about the good things he had done; then I would get a little tired of him complaining about the mean things ungrateful people said to or about him. Then I thought with a jolt: And that reminds me of WHOM?
Guilty as charged! Of course I yearn for compliments and admiration, too, who doesn’t? Don’t people realize, I demand hotly, that The Planet is the best newspaper in town? And that I make a negative income off it? So where, please, are all the hymns of praise?
But people always seem to have more to do than sit around singing songs about me! Furthermore some of them persist in pointing out whenever I misspell their names, come across as too flip, or make some tiny error like saying on the front page they had spent the last 20 years in prison. So like my friend, I’m always kicking things and saying: “The Planet don’t get no respect!”
I think the lesson to be learned here is: Do what you want to do but don’t do it for appreciation! In my case I publish The Planet because I like being the Local Press and I haven’t found anybody drunk enough to pay me for it. In my friend’s case who can guess his motivations? But forget about thanks! If people are going to admire you they’ll admire you. They certainly won’t admire you for soliciting admiration!
Here’s a truism from my life as the Local Press: Don’t go into attack mode and expect people to embrace your ideas.
I’m always pleased to see local people tackle the local gummint about matters they want changed. But what I have noticed is that when they make their cases politely and appeal for help, the commissioners lean forward and profess themselves anxious to oblige; whereas when complainants go for the jugular, the commissioners close ranks, stonewall and dive behind artificial ferns when they see the person coming again.
Thus if I, personally, wanted to petition the government for something, I would start my speech with something like, “Esteemed and honored commissioners,” and end with, “your fervent admirer, The Planet.” I would not immediately launch into a litany of PIG PIG PIG! SHAME SHAME SHAME!
(Except in the matter of the Dade Board of Education v. the Dade Public Library. The B of E ducked out from under its share of local library funding under a bad superintendent in 2012. Since then it’s had two good supers, six years and several months of booming SPLOST collections, and it still leaves the county and city to pay for the library. It's supposed to be the bastion of learning in the county, and it collects the lion's share of local tax dollars, but it still tells the library to go bleep itself with every new year's budget.
So whereas I really do believe that a gentle word turneth away wrath what I have to say to the B of E is: PIG PIG PIG! SHAME SHAME SHAME! Ah, well! The exception proves the rule.)
And finally, here’s a quick little lesson I learned from a very pretty woman in local politics who wore a very ugly sweater to a recent meeting. NO. GRAY. TURTLENECKS. EVER!
I know I’ve got a lot of nerve giving fashion advice. My idea of dressing to the nines is putting on my “dress” tennis shoes. (The way I keep them nice is by not wearing them to garden in, or on the dirt road). (When it’s raining.) I once kept wearing a pair of white pants months after I’d torn them until someone else made it official by pointing out the hole: They were comfortable and cost money so I wasn’t fixin’ to replace them until I had credible reports the world was laughing at my panties.
But this sweater was different. I sat through that meeting watching it envelop and smother all that was good and beautiful in the universe like a giant miasma of evil. And thus even I, the ultimate Unfashionista, can pronounce: Wearing an ugly color is always risky. Wearing an ugly color that comes up to your nose is like crawling into the belly of a whale.
And that’s it, Gentle Readers, for this year anyway. By next December, I may finally complete my journey of enlightenment, achieve all-the-way Niceness and be assumed directly to heaven by flocks of angels. Alternatively, I may hit the skids of Naughty to the point of being atomized by a lightning bolt.
More likely by I'll just have collected a few more poils of eternal wisdom for you; and if experience is any guide I still won't have the money to buy you anything nicer.
Until then, though, I'll just wish you a merry Christmas and hope that if there's a turtleneck under your tree the receipt is included, and you can take it back.
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