Quote of the Week...from Marilyn vos Savant

Be able to cite three good qualities of every relative or acquaintance that you dislike.
                                                               ---Marilyn vos Savant

Marilyn vos Savant is probably most known for her weekly quiz/advice column in Parade magazine, inserted in numerous Sunday newspapers.  She's credited as having an extremely high IQ, for what that's worth, and doesn't mince words about her opinions on a wide range of subjects...some of these I'm not terribly in agreement with, to put it diplomatically.  Yet she does have a lot of wise quotes, and I picked the one above because it goes counter to popular sentiment today.  Whether it's politics, reality TV, social media, school, the workplace, or any other venue, people tend to vent negatively about others in their lives or the news without couching their criticisms with some praise and understanding.  Trying to see things from the other guy's viewpoint...which is empathy...is crucial to maintaining a balanced view of others, especially those we dislike.  We're all mixed bags with good and bad...Marilyn's advice rings true to me: instead of harping on how bad someone else is, why not put your time to better use and see them for their positive traits?  Some folks in my life are disagreeable because they don't like me either, and can probably list all sorts of reasons for this.  I can't make everyone like me, and I don't want to anyway.  And I can't always like others, either.  But everyone's got something to appreciate and recognizing that fact can potentially point to improved relationships between us...

Abby Panders to Ghost Beliefs

In today’s Dear Abby newspaper advice column, Topic Numero Uno was a woman’s fear that ghosts of her deceased loved ones were lurking around her and watching her doing things like going to the bathroom and making love with her husband. She wanted to know whether she was crazy about her lack of privacy due to said ghosts.

Jeanne Phillips (“Abby”) could have just gone straight to the point, agreeably replied “Yes, you’re crazy”, and moved on to the next letter. But no, she instead decided to do something that I term “pandering to another’s narrative” in order to offer some emotional comfort. Phillips flat-out stated as fact that “the departed sometimes ‘visit’ those with whom their souls were intertwined, but usually it’s to offer strength, solace and reassurance during difficult times.” How could she know that? No, all Phillips did was to size up the frightened woman’s belief system, which she realized wasn’t going to change by just saying that ghosts weren’t real. Instead, she made up her own narrative, which naturally affirmed the existence of ghosts, to soften that writer’s fears of privacy invasion. Is this ethical?

I have done this in the past as well, although not with ghosts. I would be with someone whose beliefs were difficult for me to digest, but who still seemed so entrenched in them that the only way I would be able to effectively communicate with them would be to temporarily presume the truth of their underlying narrative, “for the sake of argument”. I would always afterward find this type of experience to be distasteful and that I had somehow debased myself in the process.

More and more, I have become more resistant to what “Abby” did: playing along with another’s absurd notions in order to reason with or comfort them. After all, I don’t notice others bending over backward to accommodate MY beliefs!

Then again, maybe Jeanne Phillips truly does believe in ghosts and how they supposedly “behave” according to some kind of ethical code. Ouch! Say you’re more savvy, Abby!