Monday, November 3, 2014

a pretend tea party

i saw a post on facebook today that got me thinking.

it was a post from a completely different viewpoint than my own.

completely.

the kind that's so different from your own that normally your eyes would roll
as you closed every door inside of yourself and walked away without looking back.

you know those.

thing is....
i want to learn right now.
i want to stretch my thinking.
and it's the totally different viewpoints that can really help me do that.

sometimes i'm aware of that.
and i remember.
a whole lotta times i forget.

this time i remembered.

so i didn't roll my eyes,
i put my foot in the way of the quickly closing inner door,
and i read the post three times thinking about what they said.

and it puzzled me.
i didn't understand how anyone could really think like that.

i went to make lunch and ponder.

i realized that if they heard my view, they'd roll their eyes and close their inner doors.

and that intrigued me.

some of our opinions have us so sure of them, we just so feel they're the correct
ones to have - it's hard to imagine they'd make anyone's eyes roll.
unless of course, the other person is daft.

that makes me smile.

that's so true, isn't it?

the other person is a moron or daft or just on another planet.

or.
maybe.
has a whole nother viewpoint i can learn from.

and the more i thought about it,
the more i saw how similar our thoughts were.

we just have completely different vocabularies to describe them.
we come from completely different angles.
but way down deep - we had a lotta the same stuff goin' on.

wow.
i had to really sit with it before i saw that.

and i realized how cool it would be to really sit and talk about it.
how cool it would be to put things out and ponder together.
and just let them all be so we could really look.
maybe see new things together that neither one of us had seen before.

that's not part of the other person's philosophy tho.
that was part of their thinking - the fact that they're right, don't question it.

so that won't happen.
but maybe i'll do it for us in my own head.
have a pretend tea party for us.
pass the cookies, munch a bit, and ponder.

there's so much to learn.
i really don't want to forget that......




1 comment:

diane in AR said...

Perfect plan for a pondering tea party. . .we do surely all have different views, but I like to think I'm open to hear why someone else feels different about something than I do. . .I try to be always willing to listen and perchance to learn. . .it is better than closing those inner doors, right?

Thanks Ter for the thought-provoking. . .does that sound right? maybe it should be thought-provoking blog. . .but I sorta like the sound of provoking. . .