Icebergs

The movie The Wizard of Oz was shown once or twice a year on TV when I was a kid. I didn’t like it at all, but that had a lot to do with my timing. It started at 6:00 on Saturday night. However, we always worked at the ranch on Saturdays and didn’t start the thirty mile drive home until it was dark. I would get home just in time to see the attack of the flying monkeys. From my perspective, that’s how the movie started. I didn’t know the background.

In 2015 we went on a family vacation to New York City. We saw the usual highlights which included a play on Broadway. We chose Wicked. It is the backstory of the Wicked Witch of the West. I learned “it’s not that easy being green”. Once I saw the play, I understood why she would come off as wicked. 

It reminded me of a chapter in the book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie. In the book he devotes a chapter to not worrying about ingratitude. He quotes Abraham Lincoln as saying, “No man was to be eulogized for what he did; or censured for what he did or did not do. All of us are the children of conditions, of circumstances, of environment, of education, of acquired habits and of heredity molding men as they are and will forever be.” Carnegie goes on to say, “Perhaps Lincoln was right. If you and I had inherited the same physical, mental, and emotional characteristics that our enemies have inherited, and if life had done to us what it has done to them, we would act exactly as they do. We couldn’t possibly do anything else.”

A real life example of this was something my aunt told my mom back in the 1960s. She was a fourth grade teacher and wondered how some of the children in her class could do so poorly. After going on a home visit with the child she marveled at how they did so well.

I’ve come to find that people are a lot like icebergs. What I see is just a small part of who they are and none of why they are the way they are. A ship can be headed for big trouble if the Captain doesn’t understand about icebergs. The same goes for me when I interact with someone. People are the way they are for many reasons. It helps me to remember I’m just seeing a small part of their exterior at that point in time. Most of the important things lie beneath their surface.

May you have enough today, one moment at a time.