Pride and Prejudice

Although it contains nerdy language, this post is really about listening...and how I need to learn to do it better.

About a week ago, a Latin-teaching FB friend emailed me to say he couldn't make an account in Linguachet, that the web address wasn't working.

In righteous consternation, I rushed to the site, tested yet again what I'd tested so many times before, and found it working.  Then I looked at the web address he sent me, which appeared to match nothing I'd ever created on the site (a good chunk of which I can recite from memory).  Where could THAT be coming from?

Sometimes what I think I know keeps me from seeing what I don't.

I tested everything I could think of.  But a few other people came on and created accounts without apparent issue or comment.  Like many of you, I am busy starting a new school year with my own students...so - like everything else in life that seems to be working fine - that comment eventually went to the back burner. 

Well, thankfully, I got a similar email today from someone else.  And it had the same bizarre web address. And I finally realized the source of the problem. It wasn't among the 6,700 (pre-compressed) files I have labored among for years. It wasn't in the complex server configuration that has taken me months of toil to learn and covers a large whiteboard on my wall.  It was just a plain-Jane web link on my own FAQs page, which was missing a single quotation mark.

And, being a helpful and tech-savvy soul himself, the first guy had more or less suggested that sort of issue on the front end.

Now, here I was, hyper-focused on making sure my app itself was running perfectly...gearing myself up to do more reeeeally complicated things...and missing the forest for the trees for that very reason.

Sometimes what I think I know keeps me from learning.

I wish I could say I didn't recognize this problem in myself.  But at least I can take comfort in implicating OTHER people too, right?  When I read it years ago, Pride and Prejudice seemed to be ALL about Lizzy's inability to see Darcy...mostly because she was too busy looking at herself.  Then I picture a flustered Atticus Finch at the end of To Kill a Mockingbird, who has so steeled himself to turn his own son over to justice that he is momentarily blinded to a critical fact: his son isn't guilty at all.  With all the zeal and integrity he can muster, the poor man is just barking up the wrong tree.

I'm so glad that Harper Lee saw fit to include Atticus' limitations.  I'm so glad my Bible is chock full of other men who just don't get it.  I am so grateful for the patience - and the pushback - of those of you charitable enough to call yourselves my friends, because sometimes I need a Heck Tate to rattle my porch.  In a world of casual likes in which many of us just move on when we don't, honest criticism may be the office of a true friend. And if you know any of us passionate souls who throw ourselves into causes, crusades, or businesses, be aware that we can lose perspective because of our intense investment; your honest critique could prove priceless.  Even if we end up rejecting your particular advice, we still need to develop the ability to see as others see if we're going to be able to serve anybody.  In this regard, I am grateful for the providential lessons of friends and failures, repeating themselves as needed, so that I can begin to see and hear what I don't!