I live only a few blocks from a church which is on the way
to the shopping area of my neighbourhood. This particular church has a large
outdoor message board with moveable letters. They change the message once a
week or so. It’s generally what I think is intended to be an aphorism, a terse
saying that expresses a general truth or astute observation. A pithy saying
perhaps.
A recent posting: “Listen carefully, your ears will never
get you in trouble.” This is actually a slight misquote from Frank Tyger, who
was an editorial cartoonist, columnist and humorist for the Trenton Times, New
Jersey. The actual words he is recorded as saying: “Be a good listener, your
ears will never get you in trouble.”
My first problem with these postings is that they are never
attributed. In other words, they never note who said the words originally. In
this particular case, the originator is also slightly misquoted. But my main
problem is that the sayings are usually over simplifications.
Many of us probably remember playing a game called “Gossip”
as children. In it, we stood in a line while someone whispered to the person at
the end. This person then whispered to the next in line and so on. By the time
the words got to the other end, they were usually mangled because everyone
heard slightly differently.
As we grow older some of us become increasingly hard of
hearing, particularly in crowd situations. As my father got deafer, even with a
hearing aid, he would often respond to what he thought someone said to him. In
many cases, this was not at all what had been said.
When I turned sixty I developed a case of vertigo. I got so
dizzy doing yoga one morning that I phoned my son to drive me to the doctor. As
we sat in the waiting room, the vertigo and dizziness returned with such force
that I had to rush down the hall to the washroom and throw up. It turned out
that I probably had Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo (BPPV). Quite a
mouthful to say, and disturbing, but it eventually went away, though it does
reoccur now and then. The condition (more common in people over 50, and in
women) is caused by certain crystals in the inner ear moving out of the otolith
organs of the ear and getting into the semi circular canals. Check out the Mayo
Clinic website for more information. (There are other causes of dizziness,
too.) Obviously, my ears did and do get me into trouble in this case.
I imagine that the people posting the saying at the church
wanted to remind us to pay attention to what others have to say. There are
techniques of active listening – restating in your own words what you think
someone has said, for example, to check that you’ve understood. Even this,
though useful, can be problematical on occasion.
We sometimes complicate our lives needlessly, but we can
also oversimplify. So let’s think about the meanings of what we read and hear,
what we say. The aphorisms or quotes that I like best are the ones that don’t
appear too easy, and make us take a few steps back to take time to contemplate
the words.
Here’s one to mull over, from Alexander Pope, English poet
(1688-1744):
“All nature is but art
unknown to thee,
All chance, direction
which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony
not understood;
All partial evil,
universal good;”
