“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.”
– attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt
There’s another, unspoken, line to that adage: “Greater minds don’t discuss anything much.”
Greater minds tend not to talk too much. Why is that? Greater minds know that the truly important things cannot be taught. They can only be learned.
Have you ever brought your ideas to an elder person? I don’t mean an “old” person. I mean an elder. Someone with some years behind them, yes, but even more than years, wisdom. You bring your pressing issues to this elder, and they just smile at you with a look of peace and compassion and tell you how everything is going to work out, even though they never satisfactorily answer the mechanics of your question. Don’t you just want to smack that face of inner peace and fortitude?
Elders have come to a place of peace beyond understanding – with the pain of knowing that they cannot teach you this peace. (Although you can learn it from them.) Their peace and understanding transcends this pain, and they continue to live in peace and wisdom and quietude.
We are all on the path to eventually becoming elder persons. (Or, if we fall by the wayside, we become “old” people, bitter and cynical. That can happen at 80 or 18 years old.) But it’s all up to us, isn’t it? Though you can’t be taught the truly important things in life, you can learn them. This is why Christ said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” And, “For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance.”
This is why some people seem to be “blessed” and “lucky” and “have it all.” They pay attention to the grace they have already been given, and they acquire more. (Those who pay attention to what they don’t have, will get more of “not having.”) That’s one valuable thing you learned from your kindergarten teacher: “Pay attention!”
Quite likely, though, she did not tell you what to pay attention to. (Also, did anyone ever have a male kindergarten teacher?) Pay attention to what you have already been given: Your upbringing. Your neighbourhood. Your aptitudes. Your lessons from failure. (You did learn, didn’t you? Instead of wallowing?) Your acquired skills. Your “happy accidents.” Your loving relationships. Pay attention to these things, and you’ll have more of them. (Actually, pay attention to your failures and “bad luck” and you’ll have more of those, too.) So, set your eyes on the grace you have already received.
Pay attention, and attention will pay you back. Pay attention!
Alpha Lim
Mystic Preacher Man
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