Hello friends, this is Smorgasbord, a self-service buffet of ideas—the veg samosa of newsletters.
Warm
“Don’t try to be cool, be warm. The world’s full of people trying to be cool, but the world needs warm people. And the world needs you!”
-Jacob Collier
Jacob Collier is an English singer-songwriter who turns his audience into a choir and directs them as instruments, with incredible results. In an interview, someone asked him what the best advice he had received was, and his answer was the quote above.
I know I’m not cool—I drive a minivan and buy most of my clothes at Costco—but then I thought: am I warm? According to Diana, I’m a human furnace, but I don’t think that’s what Jacob means. Am I inviting? Do I put people at ease when they are around me? Sometimes. I have my moments.
I think we should be more of what we want to see in the world, and I believe I want to see more warm people. It’s easy for me to be warm to my wife, children—when I’m not disciplining them—and friends; I love them. What about the stranger? The person driving next to me or those in the return line at Costco? Would it kill me to acknowledge my fellow humans, make brief eye contact, and smile? Probably not.
I know that buzzcut and beard don’t scream approachable; I know I can look intimidating to some, which has made me even more aware of my facial expressions. Diana says that when I’m mad, I put a wall behind my eyes and blink less than usual. I’m sure there’s a time and place for that, but I’ll be working on the hello-fellow-human-smile in the future. That’s my fall resolution: to be warm as the temperatures drop.
H2O
During his homily on Sunday, the parochial vicar at my parish used pulling water from the well as an example of Plato’s allegory of the cave. He said we needed to lower the bucket deep enough to fetch water. Fetching water, in this case, is akin to the pursuit of knowledge. We must go deep, sometimes through darkness, to obtain what we want.
It made me think of thirst and hydration. Our bodies need water to survive, and thirst is the way the body signals our brain for our need to hydrate. Similarly, our intellects need to be quenched. I don’t know about you, but I think I have an unusual thirst for knowledge. I tend to lower my bucket deep into the well. I enjoy taking deep dives into topics I’m intrigued by, like Catholicism, writing, and cocktails (no surprises here).
I wonder if anybody has ever said: “I think I have enough knowledge. I will stop learning anything from now on. I’m good.” Probably not to that extent, but there might be people whose thirst signals aren’t as strong, or they’re like succulents and don’t need as much water to survive.
How often do you draw water from the well? Maybe it is time for you to take a drink and be refreshed.
Disagree
Do you avoid disagreeing with someone out of fear of them not liking you? Yeah, same. But lately, I’ve been getting really comfortable voicing my opinion when I don’t agree with someone, like last week when my MIL was in town and we were discussing political candidates. I know, but don’t worry. She still made me sopes afterward, so we’re cool.
I did the same thing with my parents. I asked a question about a particular topic and didn’t really agree with their answer, and you know what? I was okay afterward. I’m going to file this development under personal growth.
Yes, uncomfortable conversations will sometimes occur, but coming from a family that sweeps everything under the rug and doesn’t talk about things, this is a significant change in how I process disagreement. The world we live in says that if someone doesn’t agree with everything you believe, they are your mortal enemies. We’re divided into camps, and we hate each other. However, I think I’ve reached a point where being liked by others ranks lower than speaking up when I disagree.
Working on controlling my passions and remaining calm has a lot to do with this. I’m trying to remove emotion from the equation and focus on reason and logic. I remember really liking debate in high school. However, I wanted to have a winning argument every time. Now, I don’t necessarily want to debate to show the other person they’re wrong and pick apart their arguments. I’m more interested in the mental exercise of defending different points of view, even if, in the end, we agree to disagree.
I think that as long as we can keep things civil and always remember to uphold the dignity of the other person, it will be okay. Things will heat up in the US in the next few months, leading to the election. It is my hope that whatever is best for the American people happens in November, and once the dust settles, we can move on with our lives. In the meantime, let’s all try to keep our sanity and call it quits when a conversation isn’t productive anymore.
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Sobremesa
Have you ever been part of a choir?
What’s something you can’t learn enough of?
Have you ever taken a rhetoric course?
1. Several. Best thing ever.
2. The depth of the love and mystery of God.
3. Yes. It’s vital to explaining and understanding.