Curiosity and Observation

I like this quote: “Observe with radical honesty and curiosity rather than judgment."

This could be my mantra. Too many of us judge everything and everybody before we take the time to observe honestly. I used to do that. In fact, we grew up in a home where my father and brothers were quick to make judgments on what they supposed were the facts. Someone always had to be blamed.

I hear that today from my own friends. Even in politics, people judge others not by who they are and what they do, but by who they vote for. I have been the brunt of some of those judgments and I have been the one judging. 

I am trying not to judge anyone by my standards alone or what my standards once were. I tell myself that only God has the right to judge a person. I try to see the good in everyone because no one is all good or all bad. While a person is a Christian and very religious, that same person might turn away a dirty homeless man and refuse him food. 

During the Great Depression, hoboes jumped off the trains that passed through Pelham, Georgia. 

Mother told me those men had left home up north because there was no work. The men jumped off the trains to beg for food from people like my parents who ran a store beside the railroad tracks. Mother always tried to find something left over from feeding her family to give to those weary travelers who were headed to Florida. They believed they could find jobs as fruit pickers,  fruit packers, and farm workers so they could have a roof over their heads. Like my father who spent time in Florida working for his older brother right after marrying my mother, they sent what money they made home to feed their families. 

Florida was booming during the twenties with building and farming going on. Some of those hoboes never went back to their families up north. But in the thirties when times were extremely hard, even those in Florida struggled to sustain themselves. One of my aunts had a small child and her husband lost his job. They spent their days in Florida pulling the gray moss off the old oak trees. They filled bags and sold them in town to merchants who used the moss for stuffing pillows and mattresses. Moss weighs very little so it took many bags of moss to bring in any money.

Back in the early 1960s

I think about the good people who attended the church where my Mother was a member. They were there every Sunday, sang the hymns, said the prayers, and tried to be good parents to their children. But some of those people said they would bar the doorway of the church and stop any Black person who tried to enter. 

Although I was young, I told my mother I could not go to that church. I didn't believe those people were really Christians. Just as I don't believe the men who owned slaves before the Civil War were true believers of God. No good man would own another human being and work that person unmercifully, I thought, and sell them away from their families. But it is not my place to judge why they did those things. They read the Bible and in that book, we see where slaves were mentioned all the way through.

In today's enlightened world, we all should understand that owning another human being is terribly wrong. Yet, human trafficking is a tremendous issue all over the world. Women and children are the usual victims. 

I have a shirt with words on the front; Practice Radical Empathy.

If we could just imagine what it is like to live in another's skin, another's family, in the body of someone who is disabled, who is elderly, housebound, blind, or deaf, would we be less impatient, would we be more generous or caring? 

Don't criticize until you have walked in someone else's shoes. Someone who recently had ankle surgery and can't put her foot on the floor for weeks said she is much more understanding of her mother who became disabled in her later years and of me who depends on others more and more. 

Have you ever felt anger because someone got out of a car in the Handicapped parking place, and walked into the store with no crutches or a wheelchair? We are quick to judge and feel the person had no right to a handicapped parking space. But maybe you didn't know that the person you believe has no right to a special parking place has an invisible illness that prevents him from walking more than the distance from his car to the mobile shopping buggies inside the store. The person with the invisible illness is me. I have shortness of breath and get extremely tired if I am on my feet for more than a few minutes. When I get home from the store it may take me hours to carry my groceries inside.

Try this for a while. Don't judge others unless you know for sure they are deceiving and manipulating innocent people. Give others the benefit of the doubt. Recently while visiting friends, I made a big effort to listen more and show appreciation to my hostess. She talks and talks and it might be because she is anxious. She often digs up dirt on others to make her stories even more outlandish. 

I tried for a moment to put myself in her shoes. She cooked a large dinner for us. She tried to make sure we did not need anything she couldn't get for us. She had spent hours decorating for Christmas and her house was beautiful. I and my sister made sure we complimented her on all she had done. It pleased her.

What do most people really want?

As I learned from Oprah years ago, the main thing people want is to be seen, to be recognized for what they do or who they are. And it is not a difficult thing for us to do. I wish I had known this years ago when I was learning to live with strangers, with a new husband, with fellow teachers in school, and especially with children.

As a child, I did not feel I was seen by my father or my older brothers. I spent my time trying to get my father's approval and never felt I did. Not until my brother told me when I was in my sixties and my father had died, that I knew he talked about me with pride. 

In many ways, I know now, my father needed and wanted the same thing -- to be seen and heard - especially after he retired and was no longer head of the family business. But he had to give up the leadership of the family to his sons, especially to his oldest son, Ray. And there was some jealousy, some friction, Ray tried hard to erase. 

One reason the elderly men and women who live alone become depressed and sick is because they feel invisible. This is also why some of them take their own lives. When we become irrelevant to the world around us, we don't feel we have a reason to live.

In our hot political world today, I look for good character in a leader, a person who puts the good of the country ahead of selfish needs or lust for power. I keep my eyes, ears and mind open to what the candidate has done or been in his or her past. I dig if I have to, to find out the political history of the man or woman running for office. So much depends on morality and decency, good character, and what the person plans to do for others when in office. 

Today I heard a congressman say he was leaving politics because the two major parties now only care about their party not what is best for the country. From what we see on TV, one would think it is so. I hope that is not true, but we have to be careful how we vote.

Some say we no longer have heroes, but we do. They might not be young handsome men on white horses. They might not be others like Mother Theresa, but every day we see heroes in our own neighborhoods. See how many you can find this week. Tell us about them in our comments.