Wisdom from the Trenches

She looked me up and down. “Are you ready to go fishing?” she asked.

“Yes!” I enthusiastically responded.

“In THAT?!?”

I was much younger than I am now, but I will never forget this conversation. I was wearing a miniskirt and stilettos. I looked dressed up for a night on the town (if your idea of a good time was dancing all night in shoes that hurt your feet and then not being able to walk the next morning). This wasn’t an intentional decision. I was on vacation with my new husband. I hadn’t known fishing would be an option at his family’s house. I had only packed dresses and heels. I was making the best of a spontaneous acitivity.

We arrived at the dock, launched the boat into the water, and began to move gear from truck to boat. Once ready to set off, I walked to land’s edge and before stepping onto the dock, I removed both stilettos so I could walk on the slatted wooden dock. I walked barefoot to the boat, tossed my shoes inside, and climbed in. My husband’s family member watched in bewilderment.

We pushed off and found a good spot for fishing. Our bait was live mealworms. They wriggled in the container. “You’d better help your city girl.” the family member said to my new husband.

“Oh, I’m okay. I know how to do this.”

“Yeah, but…it’s live bait!” protested the family member and then gasped as I grabbed a mealworm and shoved it onto a hook. “Where did you find this girl?” Later, back at the house, they would watch in shock as I sat outside in my miniskirt and stilettos, filleting the fish we had caught.

This person was coming to terms with parts of me that seem incompatible. They did not know I was taught to fish and fillet in my childhood. I camp. I hike. I can look fully city-fied and I can pop a squat in the backwoods when there is no toilet nearby. Yes, I just said that! It is possible for anyone to be two or more seemingly incompatible things at the same time. It is possible to not perfectly fit into any mold. It is possible to be unique. One of a kind. Indeed, we have all been designed to be just that.

And yet, we live in a world that loves to judge a book by its cover and to categorize them neatly into tidy boxes, never to be opened and read. We look at people’s obvious traits and size them up so quickly, never delving in to learn more about their actual personality later. Don’t lie to yourself…we all do it, including me. Without prompting or conscious thought, our brains interpret people’s external looks, body language, voice, and mannerisms within the first few seconds of meeting them – and form an opinion that puts them firmly in a stereotypical grouping. We judge. And when our judgements prove wrong, we are in shock…as if we are always right and never wrong, always know others’ internal realities more than they do, always the smartest in the room. Smarter, even, than the person we are judging. Omnicient.

But see? If I call it what it is and say it like that, we step back. We don’t want to think of ourselves as hoity-toity, God-like, smartypants (yes, I used a Muppet Christmas Carol reference). Because, deep down, we know we really aren’t. What if, instead of pretending we don’t do this or running with it and thinking we are always right when we aren’t, we acknowledged that flawed and judgmental part of ourselves more readily and opened ourselves to the very real and true possibility that others might be different than we think, that our perceptions of a situation might be biased, that we might be *gasp* wrong?!?

That’s not the first time I’ve been misjudged…and it won’t be the last. Here’s the thing: I have parts of me that others consider “incompatible”. I have parts of me that don’t compute with some people. I follow Christ – and I have many friends who have had abortions, who are in the LGBT community, who do drugs, who are atheist, Wiccan, Jewish, Muslim, and many other belief systems. I homeschooled my children, but I don’t live in fear of the public or despise formal education. I have multiple college degrees, and with each new thing I learn, I realize how little I actually know. I love being outdoors in silence, but I’m an extrovert who is also energized by being around people. I go to heavy metal concerts, I have sung in an opera, I listen to classical piano music at home, I play the flute. I love animals…but I’m not a cat person. I am married, have kids, I am a stay-at-home mom…and a feminist. I served in the United States Army, but I don’t believe war is the best solution to our world’s problems. I could go on and on. I am a walking dichotomy…and so is everyone else. Precious few of us fit into neat little stereotyped boxes. Actually? I would go so far to say that probably none of us do.

First impressions are important because we always want to start off on the right foot, but if I have learned anything over the years it is this: first impressions are sometimes (oftentimes) wrong. Because our human ability to size up a situation or person in a single glance is not 100% spot-on all the time. I know – shocking, isn’t it?? Our own perceptions are far more flawed and biased than we would like to accept. Life is more complicated than can be summed up with all the information we can see in one moment. People are more extraordinary and complex than they initially present to the general public.

But this is the most important point I’d like to make: We all have two warring, incompatible things within us that cause us all this trouble in the first place: we all know things…and simultaneously lack the knowledge to perfectly judge everything we encounter correctly. We know things, but there are things we do not know. We can make all sorts of assumptions and judgments about someone, but our perceptions, our opinions, our decisions aren’t always grounded in fact and aren’t always right. We aren’t all-knowing gods. We don’t know better or more than other people. When we attribute motives or characteristics or personality traits or stereotypes to people, it doesn’t mean that those are true of that person. We may see it in them from our outsider view, we may think it about them, we may search for things that confirm this opinion about them, and so, it might be our reality…but it still doesn’t make it actual reality. Just because we think it, doesn’t make it true. If we could all take a moment and challenge our initial impressions, thoughts, and judgments, if we could accept that we know things but we do not know ALL THE THINGS – that we can see but we do not see all things, if we could lay that flaw in us aside and begin to accept people for who they are and not who we perceive them to be, the world would be a far better place.