But
people do.
Sometimes
to our benefit.
Sometimes
to our detriment.
The
detriment angle often leads to people never learning lessons,
never fully considering situations, and far too often repeating
the same actions while believing the results will be different.
The
other day I happened to experience one of those lovely occurrences
that comes along every so often. Circumstances around me were
trying to send along that wonderfully familiar message that we
may have been overrun by stupidity. I bumped into a few people,
one after another, and each one was complaining about something
that left me in a position where basically I could only offer:
“Well,
what can you do?”
“Hmph.”
“”
(the empty quotes are signifying that nothing was said. Just
a raising of the eyebrows accompanied by a slowly repeated nod.)
What
I wanted to say was:
“Wait,
you’re serious?”
“Well,
yeah, because that’s exactly how that works.”
“Are
you really that dumb?”
Turns
out, they are. They are that dumb. The most striking thing being
that they’re usually not dumb once. They’re dumb over and over
and over again. Repeating the same approach, the same thinking,
the same mistakes.
This
is not an essay about stupidity.
Mainly,
it’s not about stupidity because all of us can be stupid. That’s
not to say “can be” as in some are and some aren’t. No, all of
us are stupid from time to time. It’s “can be” because almost
all of us are pretty level-headed, decent, and on occasion fairly
ingenious in the way we act and make decisions. Every so often
though, our brains are surrounded by fog, or our eyes have blinders
obstructing our view, or we react as is in a vat of pudding. There
are times when we can be smart, and times when we can be stupid.
The
scary thing for me, however, was that on this day these people
didn’t seem to comprehend in the slightest how their reactions
were violating the three most basic understandings of life and
our surroundings.
First
– The world is not fair.
Second
– No one cares.
Third
– Come back when you’re ready to stop whining, sit down, shut
up and do something for yourself to make a difference.
(These
are not the only understandings about life in existence. Don’t
touch that and living together can be confusing are two other
good ones. But this is about stupidity, and living together isn’t
universally about stupidity.)
I
don’t want to identify the specific situations or conversations
that set me off on this exploration, since these are fairly wonderful
folks having miserable days. No need for me to pile on or shine
a spotlight in their direction. But from time to time, we could
all make life just a bit easier if we took a few slow breaths,
counted to ten, and considered reality. You know, like the acceptance
and application of these three understandings.
Let’s
use me as an example. If I write a new book, and set everything
up to release it, there are a lot of things I need to do so that
it’s available. Things I can do as a way of trying to increase
awareness. I can reach out to libraries about author events. I
can prepare press materials and send them around to media outlets.
What I shouldn’t do is get mad about poor sales if all I did was
sit around, using my phone to play games instead of making calls
and similar unproductive activities, waiting for bookstores across
the country to reach out to me about appearances.
Much
as I would love one, I am not owed a life-altering winning lottery
ticket. My friends aren’t too interested in hearing me complain
seriously about not having a winning lottery ticket. And until
I sit down, edit the manuscript, have a book ready for readers
to purchase and reach out to schedule some readings, I won’t have
much of an appearance schedule. Movies are great, but clicking
your heels together three times and making a wish does not work
as well in the day-to-day real world.
I
started this essay out by claiming that rocks have no memories.
They’re rocks. They do rock things. They are not going to learn
from the lessons of yesterday. They are not going to try to be
a bicycle tomorrow.
We,
on the other hand, are capable of great things. We’ll have our
moments, and sometimes there is nothing we can really do to avoid
being stupid. What we don’t have to do is be rocks. At least not
when we have the ability to become waterfalls.