Versatile

Before you speak...  I have already heard.  Before you see...  I had seen a million times.  Before you reach...  I came and departed, so is the way and life of a versatile soul.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

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How many times do we speak to another person - even someone close to us - with an assumption that they have not heard what we are about to share?  That they have not seen what we are going to show them?  That they haven't been where we want to take them? 

I was really struck by this quotation when I read it.  I reflect on my own interactions with others and I almost always assume I am sharing something new or a new way of looking at something old.  That is probably very rarely true.  And it is terribly arrogant of me to think such a thing, isn't it?

People have lived lives and had experiences and thought thoughts before we enter their lives.  It is obnoxious of us to underestimate or even pretend to understand what they carry with them every day.  We can't possibly know.  We can't be the first-givers of knowledge and ideas.  We can share but they have their own contexts in which they will make meaning of what we share.

Versatile means to turn easily.  It is not so easy to easily turn the thinking of a person who carries his own knowledge and lived experience with him.  People have their own ideas about things.

Well, unless they're babies.  Babies don't know anything.  I don't say that because I think babies are stupid.  I don't think that at all.  In fact their brilliant.  They convince people to wait on them and to jump when they want food or their butts wiped or a toy they've dropped.  We may be able to share new things with babies, but we're not fooling them into thinking we're in charge.  They're way too smart for that. 

And they can turn us from a great book or a good conversation in a second if they want to.  I'm not sure if that means we are the versatile ones because we're easily turned or they are because they have so many strategies to get what they want.  It doesn't matter. 

The point is that babies are really bossy and manipulative.  Like little evil geniuses.  Well played, babies.  Well played.