"Once or twice in my career, I feel that I have done more real harm by my discovery of the criminal than ever he had done by his crime. I have learned caution, and I had rather play tricks with the law of England than with my own conscience."
In school, "the only stupid question is the one you don't ask."
I was giving a lecture in a Human Anatomy and Physiology class when one of the students raised her hand to ask a question. "This may be a stupid question . . ." she began. Being a new and relatively inexperienced teacher, I immediately replied, "There's no such thing as a stupid question."
She then asked a question that was so ignorant, and so unrelated to the topic under discussion that every other student rolled his/her eyes and/or groaned in dismay. I was so stunned by the sheer stupidity of the question that I just stood there transfixed for several seconds, wondering what to say.
I really meant to think what happened next, not say it.
Honest.
"I could be wrong," I heard myself say.
Every student in the classroom immediately turned bright red, trying hard not to laugh -- except, fortunately, for the clueless questioner.
Cheers,
Michael
__________________
“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”
The title of Rev. Terry Cole-Whittaker's first book always struck me as a truth: "What you think of me is none of my business." Kind of goes along with the "don't take things personally," or "things are not always about me" ideas. I do do better when I am more focused on myself and what I'm doing rather than on others and what they are doing.
One I've never been particularly good at but which I recite to myself often is, "It doesn't have to be good, it just has to be done."
David K. Reynolds's refinement of the Naikan (Japanese therapeutic tradition) strand of his Constructive Living program keeps my focus on myself as well. If there is a person or a situation that is really bugging you or upsetting you, the technique he recommends for dealing with it is to ask yourself 3 questions: (1) What has this person/event/episode done for me? (2) What have I done for this person? (3) What trouble have I caused them? Notably, nothing in this examination leaves any room for blaming them or saying what trouble THEY cause ME. My focus is always on myself. He describes one incident in which a couple was mugged, and they did a Naikan exercise on the mugger: (1) What did the mugger do for them? (2) What did they do for the mugger? (3) What trouble did they cause? Even they found something in the incident to be grateful to the mugger for. In all such exercises or Naikan sittings I have done, I have always found, if I examined myself with scrupulous honesty, there was far more that the other person had done for me than I was ever able to think of that I had done for them. There is nothing like it for restoring emotional balance.
Your OP seems to have been the advice I've lived by for more'n twenty-five years. I like it, but let me tell you, if you follow it, you will become a pariah in many eyes.
Hey, it got me banned from IIDB. It got me banned from HH. Speak your mind and upset the petty authoritarians of the world. Not that it's not fun, it is...but there is a cost.
Re: Words To Live By
Linear Mode
