HOW I WAS RAISED

Waco, Texas: Helen Keller said, “The highest result of education is tolerance.” She also said, “Life is either a great adventure or nothing.” Helen Keller is credited with many, many inspiring quotes. We can not know how she would have turned out had she been sighted but we do know how she turned out. Another quote, Orrison Madden; I have no recollection of Orrison but he made the observation, success is measured more so by struggle than by accomplishment and Hellen Keller could have easily been his model. 

While I’m at it, John Muir said, “If we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”  Muir was no doubt, contemplating the universe at the time but it also touches on the difficulty I have staying on task. Reading, writing, making saw dust or digging in the dirt, I get distracted easily and wander off on a new adventure long before anything constructive gets done. But getting back to Helen and the connection, like three legs on the stool, education and tolerance both lean heavily on the struggle/accomplishment-adventure equation. 

So what’s the point? In Helen’s lifetime, tolerance was a high water mark for liberal thinkers. Today it’s not enough. Tolerance is still a hurdle that has to be cleared. It doesn’t accommodate the spirit she modeled. Tolerance doesn’t require growth, only turning the other cheek. I think today Helen would have accepted rather than tolerate. It doesn’t mean that you embrace as your own but it does require the courage to be wrong and an open window to change. That’s the difference between tolerance and acceptance. I can accept major religions of the world without embracing any of them. 

I hate it when people rebut a challenge with, “That’s how I was raised.” Still, I realize the part I hate is when the strategy is simply to change the subject in lieu of defending something they truly don’t understand. But I accept that the values of our ‘Growing Up’ are important and try as we like, we can’t undo their influence on us. That influence on me contributed largely to keeping a low profile. Humility was a virtue and that show-boating self promotion was as sinful as pride and thievery. That being said, considering my experience with Texas and Texans, both privatey and in public life; I’ve always been suspicious of their moral worth and let that predisposition shade my thinking. My perception has been that a healthy ego had morphed into self absorption and narcissism. So I’m letting myself stretch, accepting that Texans are just people who not only rise from a different gene pool but also another subculture and I have transcended tolerance there. I accept them and hope someday to disarm my suspicions altogether. The lessons of my upbringing are still deeply rooted but I accept that is about me, not them. I now have ‘Lone Star’ natives for friends and loved ones. Where they hang their hat and the lessons of their upbringing are acceptable and I love them.