Show a Little Grace
In a recent daily column, commentator Carl Cannon recounted an incident years ago in which the actor Jack Nicholson and a friend displayed road rage when a driver cut them off. Nicholson and his friend banged on the offender's car roof and window with golf clubs. The victim was smart enough to stay in his car and not add to the violence. https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/15a1df57be8403be.
Cannon then remarks in his column that you never know what motivates behavior -- bad behavior -- and what negative experiences and recent traumas lurk in one's mind. (That's true for both the fellow who cut off Nicholson and the actor and his friend.) In responding to the incident, Nicholson exhibited remorse and cited the recent death of a friend as an rationale. Cannon cited the plot of the vengeance movie Nicholson had just completed filming and its negative impact.
Then, Cannon suggested we would all do well in road rage situations to show a little grace.
Knowing Cannon's work, I expect he was sending a message that is broader than car road rage. I think he is signaling to all of us -- those cutting people off and those responding to being cut off -- to show a little grace.
Grace seems to be in remarkably short supply these days it seems; no one seems capable of exercising just a touch of decency or restraint. Might we just realize that folks generally are on edge post-election, whether their candidate won or lost? Indeed, whether one is in the fray or watching the fray or deciding how to deal with the fray, edges are frayed. Literally.
When the world is topsy turvy and the bottom feels like it fell out of the pot, it is hard to find grace. Indeed, grace seems like the farthest thing from most people's minds.
Add to that that for some, the word and exercise of "grace" will not be appealing. Grace is an old-fashioned word, and it will strike some as the name of a little girl with a dirty face, based on the old rhyme. Surely it is not a "manly" word. So, instead of asking for grace, perhaps we should be suggesting the people self-install a governor on themselves -- like the governor placed on race cars to slow them down by design. Indeed, a governor does what a person can't do at certain times -- it allows them to slow down, to take stock, to make wiser decisions and not to fly or speed off the reservation so to speak.
And in addition to a governor that we can place upon ourselves with intentionality, there are three "C' words we might want to consider reinstating into common use in our lexicon: compromise, consensus and compassion. There're kind of like grace -- only stronger and better. Grace on steroids. Oh do we need that.
Note: Piece is inspired by and is for MW.
Adjunct Professor at Rockland Community College (SUNY)
7 年Compromise, consensus, and compassion are action words. Grace is a state of being, a sense of dignity and refinement that speaks to one's sense of forbearance. Grace, then, is superior, because it indicates quietude and deliberation. There is a golden rule that bids one to do unto other as you would have them do unto you. However, Rabbi Hillel uses a negative formulation to accomplish the same goal. He says, "That which is hurtful to you, do not unto your fellow." Now, consider the power of that formulation. To do unto others.... requires action and a subjectivity of design that may or may not achieve its purpose. But to do nothing to anyone that if done to you would be hurtful, is superior, because it does no harm, can do no harm, and is reflective of the quality of patience, the absence of which causes dissent, dislocation, and harm, and the presence of which allows for mutual respect and tolerance.