Sharon

All this year, if you haven't noticed, I've been sharing stories of real persons who have touched my life in a powerful way and shaped the way that I want to live in the world by their example. Most of these have been positive - I think it's important to focus on the things we want to be more of in the world; it helps us to grow in the right directions by knowing where the light is. 

But not every interaction we have in the world is positive...not every interaction we make in the world is positive, and we have to be honest about our lesser moments, too, and willing to learn from them. 

And so, Sharon makes this list because she holds the title for the dumbest thing anyone ever said to me that I just can't get out of my head. Seriously. It pops into my head at the most random times, and it's so stupid and yet... 

Sharon was a friend of my mom's at a time when I was still tagging along with my mom to various places. She considered herself a kind of spiritual guru, perhaps a prophet, and she was always speaking in tongues and talking about the insights that she had into the persons and the world around her. Things God was telling her that He wasn't telling anyone else. 

She made me uncomfortable, but I don't think she intended any malice. She just gave my spiritual heart the heebie-jeebies. We were not on the same wavelength (which, by the way, she also knew, but this was some kind of deficit in me, according to her). 

Anyway, fairly early on in the time that I knew her, we were sitting in her more public space and she stopped what she was doing and looked at me for a second and said, completely out of nowhere, "You are a very selfish person." 

I was totally taken aback. I'm a what? I was just sitting here. Petting your dog. Minding my own business. And suddenly, I'm a very selfish person? 

She went on to explain. "Your earlobes turn in very close to your head and there's not a lot of space there. That means you're a very selfish person." Then, she just went back about her business like that was the most natural thing she could have said to anyone and nothing weird just happened. 

I don't know whether I'm selfish. I know that I try not to be. I think there are a lot of folks in this world who would tell you very matter-of-factly that I will go out of my way to help anyone, any time. (Almost. I mean, I'm human.) And yet, every time I'm wrestling with generosity, thinking about where to send my funds or wondering if I should volunteer to do this or that thing or thinking about helping out in this or that way, I randomly think to myself what a selfish person I am and sometimes even catch myself in the mirror and wonder if my earlobes are still too close to themselves or whatever. 

Yes, really. It's singlehandedly the dumbest thing I have ever heard in my life, but for some reason, it keeps popping into my head every time I wonder whether I'm giving enough in this world. 

So Sharon makes this list because I realize there are persons in this world I have completely misjudged. Persons I have spoken inappropriately to. Persons to whom I have said absolutely stupid things who will always remember me for saying those stupid things and, sadly, who might be living their life right now wondering if the stupid things I said had any truth to them at all. There might be persons in this world who have spent more time looking at their earlobes than makes any earthly sense because of something stupid I said to them once - probably in self-righteous arrogance that I was absolutely right about them. 

And if you're one of those persons and you're out there, I want to use today's reflection to tell you I'm sorry. To tell you that I have grown to understand that my perspective, even when I seem so certain of it, is limited. To tell you that I don't know as much about earlobes - or about the human heart - as I once thought I did. And to ask for your forgiveness. 

If there's any good thing at all that has come out of my earlobes that apparently turn in very close to my head and leave not a lot of space there, it's that I have somehow come to use that not-a-lot-of-space to create room to consider what I say before I say it and the impact my words might have on someone who was just sitting there.