Tag Archives: conventional wisdom

Bronze

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Bronze: (v) to make a person or part of the body suntanned.

I’ve often missed out on conventional wisdom because I could not afford to go to the convention.

So I frequently found myself going against the common thread of understanding and sewing up my own solutions.Dictionary B

On one such occasion, I scheduled our music group to perform in Miami, Florida, in the month of July.

Nobody does that.

Miami becomes a glowing hot rock, to be avoided by any living creature which does not wish to swelter. But our group wasn’t that popular–we were certainly never going to be able to be in Miami in January.

So we went in July.

It was very reasonably priced (since nobody was there) and really no hotter than the rest of the country, which was also experiencing summer.

But my achievement during those two weeks was something I had never experienced before and haven’t since. For you see, I worked up the courage to put on a pair of shorts, go shirtless, and walk around the beach until my skin turned bronze.

God, I loved it.

At night, I stood in front of the mirror and stared at my brown hide, realizing that I had never before enjoyed my body–because it was the color of pewter.

I was bronzed.

I wasn’t intimidated to step along the sidewalks near the ocean in my cutoff blue jeans and just act like I was one of the locals.

In the midst of those two weeks, a friend of mine debuted her new book and invited me to come to Nashville, Tennessee, for the signing. When I arrived I was the talk of the town.

“Where’d you get that tan?”

“Must be nice to lay on the beach all day long…”

Never in my life had I felt physically valuable to the world around me.

  • Spiritually–yes.
  • Emotionally–certainly.
  • Creatively–I hope so.

But for the first time, my “bronze” covered up some of my obesity, puffiness and, shall we say, “whitey-white-white.”

Now, I know you’re not supposed to get too much sun. I know there’s a danger of cancer.

But I am so grateful that on at least one occasion in my life, I got to walk around, for a little while… as a bronze Greek god.

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Bricklayer

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Bricklayer: a person whose job is to build structures with bricks

Conventional wisdom suggests that each of us should try everything once, to be able to say we did it.

Not only is this philosophy dangerous, but the only benefit from it is to develop a sense of humor about your own limitations.

Because most things I have tried in my life I’ve really sucked at.Dictionary B

For instance, a friend from high school was building a small enclosure for his mailbox using bricks. It looked like a really simple job–so much so that he felt confident to ask me to help him lay the bricks and mortar around this mailbox, to protect it from those teenagers who thought it was clever to take a baseball bat and destroy the receptacle.

I agreed.

After all, nothing ventured, no chance for humiliation.

He took about five minutes to explain to me how to lay the bricks so they were even, with just enough mortar to hold them in place, and how to situate them in a pattern.

It looked so obvious that I have to admit that I felt a bit offended when he went into such detail.

Then he walked away.

I was left with bricks, mortar, and my Swiss cheese memory of what to do. Honest to God–I did my best.

But sometimes I used too much mortar.

Sometimes I got the bricks on crooked.

About an hour later, he came back and found that I had laid about twenty-two bricks. They were all wrong.

As I was suggesting to him that my efforts may have been flawed, and that he might want to correct them, he took a nearby sledgehammer and brought it down on my work, smashing it to smithereens.

He turned, looked at me without malice, and said, “It would take me longer to fix it than to start over again.”

As I have often done in my life pursuing various adventures, I was alerted that day to the fact… that I was not a bricklayer.

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Advise

Words from Dic(tionary)

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Advise: (v) to offer suggestions about the best course of action to someone

You can spend your time lamenting why things are the way they are, or you can learn how they are and make clever adjustments to try to restore them to normalcy.

That’s the truth.

So with that in mind, let me tell you that giving advice is similar to playing tennis with a third leg protruding from the middle of your back. At first you might think it’s a good idea, but when you get out there, hittin’ the ball, you pretty much want to reach back there and yank the thing off.

Let me say it loud and risk the critique of those around me: Americans don’t take advice. So don’t advise them. They feign interest. They pretend to be intrigued if they think you have enough clout to be worthy of their ears, but they will just as quickly leave the room and go do things exactly the way they envisioned.

So here is my idea of what to do when the instinct to advise begins to tickle at the corners of your conscience:

  1. Find out what people really want to do and understand it thoroughly.
  2. Discover what parts of their aspiration are dangerous, illegal or stupid.
  3. Don’t share these discoveries with them directly.
  4. Take the balance of what is not self-destructive in the plan and encourage it heavily.

There you go.

Even though there is conventional wisdom which says there is great benefit in a multitude of counselors, this is only true if you listen to them. Since listening is not only a lost art, but more like a Nazi book burning–totally rejected by most people as they dance around the fire–it’s a good idea to establish a pattern of encouragement for smart while ignoring stupid.

  • If we did this in politics, for example, we could soon eliminate bad ideas by giving them no air play.
  • If we did it in religion, the better parts of God which benefit humankind, could be thrust to the forefront, while ignoring abstract traditions.
  • And if we did it in our personal lives, we would soon find that the weird things we’re pursuing are actually rather boring in the long run, and we could turn vegetables into candy. (Well, I went too far there. But at least we could find things to pour over vegetables which would make them edible.)

So you can feel free to ask for advice, but you must understand that folks expect you to heed it.

The best thing to do is to pay close attention to what works, what blesses, what enhances and what uplifts … and try to do that again tomorrow.