I Hear With My Little Ear

As years go by and ears age, hearing clearly and thinking clearly get harder. However, at any age, what you hear and what you think you hear are not the same thing. I want to tell you about an incident that happened over fifty years ago, shortly after we moved to Guelph. It involved a misunderstanding over an improbable exchange between Dorothy and me which a stranger overheard as we were walking downtown.

Dorothy: I want to make some Christmas stockings from felt, but I don't have enough red. I'll have to get some more.

Dennis (always looking to save a nickel): But you have other colours. You could make them black on one side and red on the other.

Stranger (two steps ahead of us, who began to pay attention when he heard the word black and was instantly offended): Are you calling me a Communist?

Dennis: No, no. We weren't talking about you. We just need to buy some red felt for Christmas stockings.

Unfortunately, we were not able to convince him. He knew what he heard, and he was sure we were talking about his skin colour and his politics. So he departed angry, another incident of racial prejudice to add to his collection of grievances. I don't blame him. I suspect that his perception of my meaning was more plausible than my intention given his experience. I was sorry and have been sorry ever since that we were not able to make a friend of him by finding common ground and mutual understanding. It happened too quickly, and we were too timid to contrive a happier ending to the story.

The words I spoke sketched outlines of intent.

The stranger reconstructing what I meant

presumed to colour it outside the line

from his own palette while rejecting mine.

Common ground and understanding come slowly and with effort. I read somewhere that living together is the hardest problem we humans have to work on with our big brains. Everything else we think about is trivial in comparison. It sounds to me like one of those plausible propositions that survives because no one can disprove it. Let's just say that getting along with people is an accomplishment that has made us safe in a dangerous world. Therefore to remain safe, we should do the work of community with a will. 

Speak up,

then listen,

then repeat 

until the noise of egoistic instinct

is drowned out

by the music of respect, acceptance, 

patience, forgiveness,

fairness, generosity,
trust and compassion,

you and I becoming us. 

Then, all together, troubled though we be,

it is community that sets us free.