I’m so happy to announce The Encourager’s Devotional is now available in both ebook and paperback formats. The Encourager’s Devotional is a year’s worth of monthly devotions with messages to encourage the reader and inspire them to minister encouragement to others. Each chapter is designed to be completed in a month and contains a Devotion, Bible Study, Bible Study Answer Guide, Wrap-Up section, and Reflection Page.
The material may be used as a personal study or with a group. Hebrews 10:24–25 says, “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds . . . encouraging one another.” The readings and studies in this book are meant to spark your thinking about people you may want to minister encouragement to, suggest ways to go about doing that, and spur you on to take action on those ideas. Ample room is provided for you to log your ideas and journal your thoughts. You may read this book with the goal to become more intentional about encouraging others, or expand that idea to establish an Encourager’s Ministry with others.
They could have protected me. They should have protected me.
They said they didn’t know. What they should have said was that they didn’t want to know.
I try to “get it.” I try to allow for the pain it would have caused them to admit the truth. This was someone they loved. Someone they were taught to respect.
I try to “get it.” But I cannot. I cannot because their willful ignorance allowed harm to come to me and to at least four others (I’m assuming more based on his patterns and his access to children for decades).
Those are the opening lines of a piece I’m working on as I process some events of my life. I will finish that piece and tell those parts of my story at some point (maybe), but for today I’m pausing to “sit with my feelings” (as my counselor often advises me to do). The main feeling I’m sitting with here is anger. Anger at that one concept – willful ignorance. Here’s what I wrote next in the other piece:
Willful ignorance. What a harmful, evil, ugly thing. What it often comes down to is choosing self-protection over the protection of others.
As I was writing, I got bogged down researching willful ignorance and its many comrades – willful blindness, plausible deniability, turning a blind eye, the ostrich effect, knowledge avoidance, confirmation bias, self-deception, delusion, wishful thinking, cognitive dissonance, and more. I even delved into epistemic akrasia, which is a weakness of will that causes one to act against their own better judgement. It’s a phrase often used in relation to addiction.
Willful ignorance is a “decision in bad faith to avoid becoming informed about something so as to avoid having to make undesirable decisions that such information might prompt.”[1]
It has been further explained as “the willful decision not to know, as opposed to the inability to access information or disinterest in the question. Deliberate ignorance can result from inaction, that is, not searching for diagnostic information, or from action, such as refusing information that someone else offers.”[2]
Besides my tendency to get side-tracked in research anyway, in this case I now see I was looking to understand how someone could rationalize turning a blind eye to something as horrible as molestation of a child. Again, I was trying to “get it.” And again, I cannot. After days of study, here I am back to being angry at that cursed phenomenon – willful ignorance.
What I do get is that we all need defense mechanisms. We need to protect our psyches (our conscious and unconscious minds). The situations that make us resort to willful ignorance are personal and of high impact on us and our relationships. They often hit at the very core of our identity even.
Going back to my own history, why did I spend so much time trying to “get it” (and not just in this latest round of pondering, but often throughout the years)? The very factors that led my should-be protectors to choose not to see the evidence right in front of them and not to investigate the matter were also at play to keep me from trying to work through my own experiences. These were people I loved. I was taught to respect them. It brought me no joy to find fault in them. And the questions in the back of my mind were certainly at play. Would I help or hurt the broader community by exposing the truth? How would my life change if I could no longer believe they loved me or cared for me? Would I, could I, even function in that community any longer?
Pulling our own blinders off can put us at odds with people we have felt a sense of belonging to, and even put us at odds with who we envisioned ourselves to be. All of this is disconcerting and can make us feel untethered.
I can see why some argue that to avoid such “knowing” is sometimes a rational response specifically because it helps us maintain hope and gives us autonomy to decide what we will and will not allow into our cognizance at a given time.[3] Where I take issue with this is when protecting our own psyche comes at the expense of someone else’s well-being.
That said, I must insert some clarification here because the idea of “protecting the well-being of others” is often the reason some hesitate to expose those who are doing wrong. And indeed, some even preach that it is inappropriate to do so. The arguments may sound like this: You’re hurting a good man’s reputation. You may cause people to lose their faith. You’ll distract from all the good the organization (or church, or political party) is doing.
So, to be clear, I’m not advocating risking one’s own mental health to enable bad behavior, appeal to a manipulator, pacify a narcissist, protect predators, or engage in other such unhealthy relational dynamics. What I am suggesting is that some circumstances require us to fight against willful ignorance and its many comrades with all our might. It’s precisely because these circumstances have such impact on us and the potential to bring harm to others that we bear a great responsibility to seek the truth and not hide from it.
In law, the phenomenon of avoiding truth is called “willful blindness.”
A person can be found guilty of a crime if there was information they could have known but intentionally chose not to know so they could escape culpability. An example would be a drug smuggler who never looked in the package they were delivering. In court cases involving willful blindness, juries are given the “ostrich instruction” to validate that “deliberate ignorance and positive knowledge are equally culpable . . . one ‘knows’ facts of which he is less than absolutely certain. To act ‘knowingly’, therefore, is not necessarily to act only with positive knowledge, but also to act with awareness of the high probability of the fact in question.”[4]
In Margaret Heffernan’s powerful TED Talk on the dangers of willful blindness,[5] she gave examples of how it can harm families, corporations, religious institutions, whole communities, and even nations. She cited additional reasons people choose willful blindness, such as fear of retaliation or a sense of futility (nothing will ever change, so why bother?). Elsewhere, she is quoted as saying, “Nations, institutions, individuals can all be blinded by love, by the need to believe themselves good and worthy and valued. We simply could not function if we believed ourselves to be otherwise. But when we are blind to the flaws and failings of what we love, we aren’t effective either . . . We make ourselves powerless when we pretend we don’t know. That’s the paradox of blindness: We think it will make us safe even as it puts us in danger.”[6]
In the TED Talk, Heffernan shared examples of people who dared to dig further, acquire knowledge, and expose things others chose not to see. Such people, “recognize that, yes, this is going to be an argument, and yes, I’m going to have a lot of rows with my neighbors and my colleagues and my friends, but . . . I can collaborate with my opponents to become better at what I do.” She says, “These are people of immense persistence, incredible patience, and an absolute determination not to be blind and not to be silent.”
As much as willful ignorance has the power to harm, breaking its hold has the power to heal and transform.
To begin the process, Heffernan suggests asking yourself these questions:
What could I know, should I know, that I don’t know? Just what am I missing here?
As I’ve thought about willful ignorance and its ramifications, I’m convinced that working to overcome it is key to addressing many of the destructive dynamics playing out in our society. Following Heffernan’s lead, I want to spend the rest of our time here asking some questions that might help us see where we may be using willful ignorance as a defense mechanism.
If you don’t think you need to do this exercise, let me challenge that thought with a few humbling insights my recent reflections on my own story have brought me. At some point I realized I was more willing to say one person who allowed harm to come to me was being willfully ignorant, more willing to attribute a level of neglect to them, than I was regarding another who was also supposed to have protected me. They both had equal access to the information. I’m still asking myself why that is the case and whether I am correct in making the distinction between them. Why am I not holding them equally culpable? I have a sneaky suspicion it is because I value the relationship of the one more than the other. To attribute willful ignorance to them will hurt that relationship, and that’s why I’m not ready to go there in my thinking.
It is not easy to address our own bias and inconsistent thinking, which leads me to our first question:
Might you be willfully ignorant of your willful ignorance?
Okay, that one is a little tongue-in-cheek, but I do think it’s a good starting point to admit that this is possible. There are times we simply don’t care to know what we might be missing. In our current societal state of mind, this may be rooted in anger and sound something like this: I don’t care to investigate this any further because it’s not worth my time to become knowledgeable about the arguments of people I think are just stupid and hateful.
Let’s move on to more specific areas of contemplation.
Where might willful ignorance be playing out for you?
Family?
Other personal relationships?
Church?
Politics?
Work?
Other?
Keep those various life settings in mind as you continue to think on the following questions.
What might willful ignorance be protecting?
Your heart? – You can’t bear the thought of whatever it is you’re refusing to know being true, or that your relationships will be challenged? Other heart issues like hurts or sensitivities?
Your ego? – You don’t want to admit you’re wrong or perhaps that you’re culpable for harm that has come to others, or that you’ve been gullible?
Your mind? – You can’t possibly imagine someone you’ve deemed inferior or an enemy being even partially right?
Your sense of being, or purpose, or belonging? – You don’t want to face whatever changes you might have to make if you learn you’re wrong in your assessment of a situation?
Your security? – You’re afraid of retaliation or losing your job if you speak out?
Who might be harmed by your willful ignorance?
Is there someone you should be protecting but aren’t?
Do you disregard accusations of harm?
When someone you love or your favorite celebrity, pastor, or politician is accused of something wrong, do you immediately jump to their defense? Or are you willing to ask the tough question, “What am I missing here?” . . . and then do the hard work to seek knowledge on the matter?
We so do not want to believe the people we’ve held in high esteem could be predators, could be dishonest, could be manipulating us. But conversely, do you find it easier to believe such accusations if the person being accused is “on the other side” or “in the enemy camp”?
Is your approach to accusations the same no matter which “side” the accused is on?
Relatedly, do you seek knowledge from multiple and varied sources on both sides of whatever issue is being addressed?
Or are your sources one-sided? Are you prone to confirmation bias – only seeking to gain knowledge that confirms what you already believe?
Are you ignoring the pain someone is expressing? Brushing them off? Even if you become more informed and find you still disagree with them, could at least giving credence to their perspective or their story help the relational dynamic?
Have you taken the time to hear personal stories of people with whom you disagree? Not just their arguments, but the experiences they’ve had which might have led to their beliefs?
Is there someone you are not only unwilling to hear their argument, but are willing to demean them because they do not agree with you?
Do insults readily roll off your tongue either to their face or when in conversations with others about them?
Do the people you chat with and listen to (your information sources) spew hatred? Do you ever step away from those voices to see if they have hardened your heart?
It is a challenge to identify whether other people are purposefully turning a blind eye to information they could and should know, and even more so to recognize our own areas of willful ignorance. It’s challenging because of the mental and emotional tolls involved. Then there are the relational and identity components that gnaw at our psyche during the processing. And even more difficult to explain, let alone deal with, is the intermingling of analyzing someone else’s culpability while also being open to our own. Just writing all that makes me discombobulated – not an uncommon feeling lately.
Then, I went and added the layer of not only thinking about my own life events, but to further application in our broader society. And, of course, I’ve found the discombobulation carries over, especially in today’s environment where many people’s emotions are running at full throttle.
So, is it worth it? Well, if I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t be putting this post out there (especially, again, in our current environment where any challenge to people’s belief systems is met with such backlash). But it is worth all of this because the potential for harm when we keep the blinders on is serious.
One thing I’ve kept in mind in all my processing is how people (including myself) do reveal their tendency towards “deliberate not-knowing.”[7] I became more confident in labeling the actions of my “caregivers” as willful blindness (yes, I used the legal term here because I think it is that egregious) when I realized they were often speaking out of both sides of their mouths.
For example, one minute they claimed not to have any knowledge of the predator’s proclivities, but the next they explained away that when they found out he had “been handsy” with one of their own they “had a talk with him.” Their point B, contradicted their point A.
How often are we seeing this kind of contradictory language from the political and religious leaders who are coercing us into an “us against them” mentality? It might sound like this:
My people did not do that, it was those people over there . . . but when my people did do that, it was because they were fighting for the good.
We are standing up for Christian values, but Jesus was wrong on this one point.
I won’t acknowledge that rioting was bad for my people because your people’s rioting was worse.
It’s not right for you fascists to call people fascists.
This person who potentially mishandled classified government information MUST be investigated! But not this one.
Are you willing to look for these red flags, this kind of double-mindedness, and call it out no matter who is doing it?
I leave you with one final question. Do you readily accept such duplicity without question? That might be one of the biggest tell-tale signs of your own willful ignorance.
I know that is a harsh statement and may seem uncaring. I almost took it out.
I am convinced, however, these are times that call for all of us to face the realities before us with boldness and hold each other accountable to better behavior.
It’s a time to call out willful ignorance and the harm it is doing.
[3] Arfini, S., & Magnani, L. (2021). Embodied Irrationality? Knowledge Avoidance, Willful Ignorance, and the Paradox of Autonomy. Frontiers in Psychology, 12. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.769591
[4] Gemmell, K. (2020, April 11). Willful Blindness | Simons Law Office | MA Criminal Defense Attorneys. Boston MA Criminal Defense Attorneys | Simons Law Office. https://www.jbsimonslaw.com/willful-blindness/
Jesus said in Matthew 22 that everything hangs on these two commandments:
1. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. And …
2. Love your neighbor as yourself.
I often think of this as a door hanging on two hinges. If one hinge is broken, the door does not function as a door but rather as a barrier. Likewise, if someone is ignoring one or the other of these commands – even if they are hyper vigilant about the other – they are not functioning as a Christian. And they may, indeed, be functioning more as a barrier keeping others from moving towards the Gospel of Christ.
You may want to view the video prelude to this post which explains some new developments in the disinfectant debacle.
In Facebook discussions this week regarding President Trump’s April 23rd White House briefing and his comment/question* on injection of disinfectants as a possible way to deal with COVID-19, I found myself thinking time and again about a bit of wisdom from my high school debate teacher. She taught that a good debater can argue both sides of an issue.
*Which was it? A comment or a question? That’s actually one of the things that was up for debate. There is a vast difference between saying we should inject disinfectants into the human body to fight COVID-19 and asking someone if that’s something that could be studied. President Trump asked the question.
Why is that? Well, if you want to win people over to your viewpoint, you need to understand their arguments, anticipate their questions and rebuttals, and speak to those things. You do not win a debate by merely saying, “Here’s what I believe. I’m right and you’re an idiot if you don’t agree with me.” And you don’t even win by simply proclaiming the talking points that resonate with you. You have to understand what’s in the hearts and minds of those you’re communicating with to know which of your arguments might be most effective with them.
If ever we needed to be competent at debate it is now when most of our discussions regarding politics, health, and safety are online, in written form. In this medium, we don’t have the benefit of “reading” someone’s demeanor or having them read ours (for example, to know when we’re being sarcastic or saying something in a more questioning manner). There is also the strange phenomenon where we feel more liberty to be meanspirited when we are not having to deal with someone face to face. Add to that the general level of stress in our society right now and you have a situation that is ripe for misunderstanding, anger and intolerance.
Most people who have been involved in formal debate and been assigned to argue for a position that is actually opposite of their own would attest to the fact that there are benefits to the process. Even if you do not change your overall opinion on the matter from that type of debate preparation, you do come to realize the other side has some valid arguments that need to be considered.
At a time when we could all use some stress relief, while also addressing some truly important matters we are facing, I hope this series of blog posts will foster more productive and less angry conversations.
In Part 2 of “Disinfectants, Debates, and Deplorables,” I will share more specifics about the Facebook conversation that sparked me to write this post. I will provide examples of smart moves by some involved in the debate that helped me to change my mind on some things, as well as tactics from both sides which were detrimental to their cause.
I woke up this morning thinking, This is the saddest Easter I’ve ever experienced. On top of not being able to see my kids and grandkids or gather with church family for worship, I guess I was still reeling a bit from the fact that within a very short timespan yesterday I learned two people I know died from COVID-19. One was a former pastor and one was a classmate from high school.
Adding to my gloom was 1) this is my first Easter without my dad who passed away in January and 2) my mom has been in the hospital since March 27th and we have not been allowed to visit her.
Thankfully, someone shared a song on Facebook that helped me turn the corner in my thinking.
Side Note: Please share your good thoughts and the things that are keeping you encouraged on social media. Yes, we need to be educated on what’s going on in this crazy world. And there are many things out there right now that make you go, “Hmmm …” But mixed in with all your political angst and conspiracy conjectures, please sprinkle in some positive. We all need it.
The song was “Easter Song” and it helped me go from my initial thought this morning – this is the saddest Easter ever – to feeling encouraged and joyful. I listened to three different versions of it and could not decide which one I loved most. So, I’m going to share all three here. I’d love to hear in the comments which is your favorite rendition and why.
Version #1 is performed by Second Chapter of Acts. Makes sense to start with this one as Annie Herring from the group wrote the song. This group has been a favorite of mine for many years. The group members are siblings and family harmony is hard to beat.
Version #2 is the brother from 2nd Chapter of Acts, Matthew Ward, doing it solo and many years later. I absolutely love this man’s voice!
Version #3 is a live version by Keith Green. The impact of Keith’s music and life was foundational to me and many others I’m sure. He died in a plane crash in 1982 before the age of 30 but the passion he put into his music and ministry has given him a lasting legacy. Listening to him and his message during this live version brought me to tears, but also made me rejoice to know he did not live or die in vain. I’m comforted to know he gained the full realization that Christ is indeed our living hope. I look forward to the day I will rejoice in heaven with him and so many others who have gone before.
I hope you enjoyed the music and that it helped you focus on the true hope of Easter as it did me. Again, I’d love to know which version you prefer and why. God bless!
At a church service several weeks ago, before we could no longer meet together due to COVID-19, we were challenged to think about what we would do if we only had a certain amount of time to live.
Side note: Don’t worry, this was not some morbid scare tactic taking advantage of our coronavirus worries. It was actually just before the virus was really on anyone’s radar to be worried about, at least no more of a concern than any other bug during flu season.
At one point in the sermon, we were instructed to open envelopes which had been provided to each of us as we had entered the sanctuary that morning. Inside each envelope was a card announcing the hypothetical amount of time each of us had remaining on this earth.
My card said, “1 Hour.” I wondered immediately what the minister would do if I jumped up and screamed “I’ve got to go see my grand babies!” as I ran out the door. I refrained.
After that initial thought, one thing that came to mind was that I would want to write one more blog post. That might seem like a strange thing to consider, but I was thinking in terms of legacy and I would not want the last blog post I wrote to be memorialized as my last publicly proclaimed thoughts about God and life.
That post was written over two years ago when I was in a real funk. And honestly, the fact that I have not written here since is indicative of the fact that I’m still not quite out of it. But as I was considering what I would say if I did write “one last blog post” (and only had one hour to live – so obviously wouldn’t want to spend the whole time writing), I thought, all I really need is one quick sentence to speak resolution to that last post. All I really need to say in response to the thought that I was “Hoping God Proves Me Wrong” is …
GOD DOESN’T NEED TO PROVE ANYTHING MORE TO ME!
God proved everything He needed to prove on the very day we memorialize today as Good Friday – the day Jesus gave His own life so that I might have eternal life.
It’s interesting that even after all that deep pondering, it still has taken me weeks to muster up the mental energy to get back to writing. I’m thankful to my friend Aric Marshall who shared his music video on Facebook. Listening to his beautiful saxophone rendition of “Were You There” brought me to the place I needed to be – the place where I’m focused on my Savior and what He has done for me.
I’m going to try to embed the video below and hope it works. If not, I’ll try to fix it later. But for now, I’m going to skip my normal tendency to edit and re-edit and just get this thought out there. Because, you know, this might be my last hour to live and I have other things to do. I mean, “I’ve got to go see my grand babies!!!” (through video chat, of course).
So far, my annual writing retreat has been a reflection retreat. I’ve been in quite the writing slump for quite some time. It’s even been hard for me to journal (that alone is usually a sign I’m not in a good place). The past six years have been filled with losses for me. I have been grieving the loss of my sister. My father suffered a stroke which has taken much of him away from me. And in between those two life altering events I have also had several dreams shattered. Things I had invested my time and my heart in were snatched away, one after the other.
As someone who has held Ephesians 3:20-21 as a life theme, this has been hard to process. That verse says, “God is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.” I’ve always followed that with, “And I can imagine BIG things!”
Well, I always followed with that . . . until now. More recently, I actually told someone I am now afraid to dream big or follow my passions because it just leads to disappointment.
Thankfully, the friends I do this writing retreat with are what one of them calls “safe haven friends.” On the first night of this retreat, when we usually list our goals for the week, I shared my struggles and confessed that I had no specific writing goals – or at least none that I’m motivated to work on. They listened, asked probing questions (the good kind that showed they cared and wanted to understand), and they agreed to be in prayer for me.
Last night, one friend asked if I had heard of Mandisa’s new album Out of the Dark. She explained that the songs were written after Mandisa had dealt with the loss of a friend to cancer – a friend for whom she had been praying and believed God would heal.
I was intrigued, so I listened to a few podcasts where Mandisa talks about it. When Mandisa said, “That was just not the way I thought the story was going to end” I knew I had to buy the album. The song “Prove Me Wrong” resonated so strongly with me, but I’m still processing the how, and why, and where it leads. I can’t imagine I won’t do a follow-up post (because I do still believe God will ultimately prove me wrong), but for now I’m just going to share a portion of the lyrics and the video.
Would it be wrong if I asked you for proof? I wish that I could just believe, without questioning I’m just being honest with you And they say your ways are better But I still don’t understand And you can’t hold me together And this can’t be your perfect plan
Prove me wrong Prove me wrong All this pain This sorrow in my heart I can’t find my way out of the dark
I woke up thinking, Who in the world would be knocking on my door at 3:00 am? I was alone, so I didn’t want to answer, but the knocking was persistent. If it’s a family emergency, they surely would have tried to call first, I reasoned as I grabbed my phone. Alarmed to see a multitude of messages and texts from my brothers and my mom, I hurried to the door without even checking what the messages said. I let my brothers Steve and Shawn in. They said they were heading down to Tennessee because our dad had another stroke. I was relieved to know it was not worse news.
When we got to the hospital and Mom led us through the hallways to Dad’s room, she kept saying how confusing the hospital layout was. I figured her brain was just as tired and frazzled as her appearance. But as the hours wore on and we attempted to navigate our way to various rooms and facilities, all three of us “kids” laughed in agreement with her – this place was like a maze.
At one point, we went outside for some fresh air and discovered the hospital had a labyrinth prayer and meditation garden.
The labyrinth at Jackson-Madison County General Hospital (Jackson, TN)
Unlike a maze with its dead ends and turn-arounds, a labyrinth is one single path that leads you to the center and then back out. The goal of a labyrinth walk is as follows:
Use the walk on the way into the center to clear your thoughts and release your burdens.
Once you get to the center, you’re in a better frame of mind to pray and/or receive what you need from God.
After spending time in the center, you walk the path out, reviewing and meditating on what you have received.
I returned to the labyrinth that night. I knew it would be hard to lay aside the concerns I had for my dad, but I took a deep breath and began my walk. One way to clear your mind for the process is to repeat a word or phrase as you walk; I had none for the moment. But just a few steps in, I found myself humming the words to an old Kathy Troccoli song: My life is in your hands, my heart is in your keeping. I had my mantra.
I started repeating that first line to the beat of my steps. Soon, I was adding and adjusting words.
My life is in your hands, my life is in your hands, my life is in your hands,
yes, my life is in your hands
My father’s life is in your hands, yes, My father’s life is in your hands,
yes, my father’s life is in your hands
Yes, my father’s life is in the hands of my Father, yes
My father’s life is in the hands of my loving Father,
Yes, my loving father’s life is in the hands of my loving Father
By the time I reached the center, my only prayer was one of thankfulness.
There will be many more prayers to come as we learn the extent of the damage this stroke has caused and watch my dad work through its effects. But the one prayer that serves as a banner over all the rest has been answered. In fact, it was answered long ago, when my loving father placed his life in the hands of our loving Father.
To see more posts about my labyrinth walks, click here.
So, I wasn’t going to do the #PimpMyBio for #PitchWars, but after a night of writing (and wasting time playing games) I’m just slap-happy enough to give it a shot. I’m mainly doing it to help spread the word about Pitch Wars. As described by Brenda Drake, who started the contest five years ago (Thank you, Brenda!), …
“Pitch Wars is a contest where published/agented authors, editors, or industry interns choose one writer each, read their entire manuscript, and offer suggestions to shine it up for agents. The mentors also critique the writer’s pitch to get it ready for the agent round.”
Yeah, it’s a little late, but if you have a completed manuscript you could still enter by 10 pm (EST) tonight.
At any rate, as an unofficial part of the contest, Lana Pattinson started the #PimpMyBio Blog Hop for participants. This is just one example of how the contest is not only a great opportunity for aspiring authors, it’s also a community building experience.
The point of the Bio Blog Hop is for those of us involved to get to know one another, so without any further ado (yeah, I just used a cliche) … Here are a few things about me:
I don’t generally fit into a mold easily. That’s one reason I didn’t want to do the bio pimping. My thought processes went something like this …
Oh man, these folks use a lot of GIFs for their entries. Hmm, that’s not gonna work for me.
But, I also don’t like to be a party pooper. There are enough naysayers in this world. So, I’m trying to get on board with this. However, …
I’ve always been a firm believer in valuing the uniqueness of the individual. And, more recently, I’ve realized that includes valuing my own uniqueness. So, I’ll come to the party, but I might not wear the proper attire.
I’m sensitive to the feelings of others. That, ultimately, was one of my main hang-ups with “pimping” my bio. My daughter has been involved with #pimpinjoy for several years now. She once hosted an event and I asked a friend to join. She said she liked the idea, but had real trouble using the term “pimp” in a positive way given her history of abuse. We talked about the evolution of language and the pros and cons of the pimpinjoy movement. I did participate in my daughter’s event, but it was less public than this. So, I pondered … and pondered … and, well, …
I ponder a lot. And I like to do such pondering both in solitude and in community because, …
I think dialogue is the key to better relationships and to working toward a cure for the issues that plaque our society.
Well, there it is. I thought my #PimpMyBio party dress was going to be much more fun and whimsical than it turned out to be. I’ve always said I’m a mood dresser. I used to have one blouse I called my “I don’t give a crap blouse.” I warned my office assistants if they saw me wearing that blouse on any given day I might not be very attentive to the “squeaky wheels” that might stop by to complain. Maybe I should put that blouse on now because, on the one hand, I’m tempted to try to give a name to my #PimpMyBio party dress. On the other hand … well, the said blouse would fit because my creative juices have run dry for the time being. But, if you have any suggestions, let me know.
Pull Up a Chair 