Symbols vs Words

'Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.' ~Jack Welch - an American retired business executive, author , and chemical engineer.

I’m always pushing the wrong button to unlock the car door, especially if it is pouring rain or freezing cold. The picture of the lock securely snapped shut, tells my brain that the doors are locked and so I push it! To no avail! in the meantime any passengers waiting to get in the car, either drown or freeze to death. Now if I have time to actually think it out, I know that the it isn’t telling me the car is locked and that I should use it. It is saying that in order to lock the car, I need to push it.

The forward arrow and the two parallel lines on an audio recorder are equally puzzling to me. I can never remember if the arrow says the audio is playing or if it says it is stopped and I need to use it to actually get audio. Now if someone [me!] has muted the audio track, confusion really sets in. One day lately as I was apologizing [yet again] to my husband for keeping him standing in the rain, I said, I really don’t know what is wrong with me, my brain has never had any trouble with the on and off words on a light switch. His response “It grew up with words not pictures.”

And that says it all right there! We can never become completely divorced from what we grew up with, from that which we first learned. That is one reason why we resist change. We find it’s confusing, that it doesn't always make sense to us, even when we can see it makes a great deal of sense to other people. Even when we embrace change we may find times when an automatic switch flips inside of us, and we are back with the old, unable to comprehend the new. Because we can never really go back, we have to learn to deal with our new reality. I have to come to grips with the fact that my smartphone is never going to use on and off buttons to play music. So either I cope with what is new, or I deny myself the pleasure and convenience of enjoying music from that source. My choice!

However I’m not going to throw out the smartphone because I find it challenging from time to time. Nor am I going to insist that other people get rid of theirs.

My theology, also becomes challenging from time to time. I find bits and pieces of my childhood theology popping up, contradicting and denying what now is. But in just the same way as with my phone, I have to deal with my new reality, to realize that going back is neither practical or possible, that once the next step has been taken it cannot be denied.

The alternative is sticking my head in the sand and refusing to look at what is new.

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