What is common about sense? If you think about it you would think it is in fact very uncommon actually. It seems that some have it and some do not. Or do they? As we grow from childhood many of the things deemed common sense we learn from trial and error even more so than we do our parents. As many times as we are told the fire is hot and will burn you if you touch it; it isn’t until we do touch it and we do get burned that we realize there was wisdom in the words of advice given to us. In my opinion that displayed a lack of sense more so than the presence of it. But then how are we to truly know surrounded every day by distrust and trickery, deceit and betrayal? Would it make perfect sense to assume that advice you are given even from a parent is advice that should be adhered to and believed to be factual? Children have lost their lives at the hands of parents they believed loved them and would protect them, and parents have lost their lives at the hands of the children they raised, loved, and protected. Who are any of us to say who has sense and who does not? If all that is thought of as common sense is only in reality learned by those that experienced that particular common experience. That same experience may not be so common to someone else. As we grow older and become licensed operators of motor vehicles not only are we schooled in the laws that apply but we have all for the most part been passengers in vehicles at one point and time or another. Yet how many are injured, or killed every day by drunk drivers, careless drivers, or just plain idiots that for some quite common reason believe that the rules do not apply to them, they are smarter and more experienced than the next person? Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey does not always apply. Something’s actually tightened as you turn them to the left and loosened as you turn them to the right. Everything that goes up does not in fact come down. That so-called dumb blonde that did not know how to work the gas pump may be the Dr. that saves your life. In my opinion, the only common sense is that sense not used when passing judgment on someone else. For every hundred things I know how to do there are ten thousand I can not but wish that I could and am thankful that someone else can. The only dumb question is the one not asked. When you have reached a point in your life where you know everything you are no longer living anything but a lie you have mistakenly convinced yourself into believing. Do you ever wonder how it is the blind can see more than you with your perfect vision? Do you ever wonder how the deaf can hear that which eludes your perfect hearing? Do you ever wonder how paraplegics feel more than we do? Would that be common sense or just finely tuned senses? At some point in our lives, we have all made mistakes, some of us were lucky and never got caught. Others are not so lucky even though morally and ethically are every bit as good a person as you and me. They are shunned and outcast simply because their mistake is a matter of record. Who is the better person? The one that made a mistake and paid for it or the one that made the same mistake and got away with it? What kind of sense does that make? We are all but puppets on a string molded into that which society with their misguided sense of what is right and wrong as they lead us around like a homeless dog on a leash. Until we decide to see like the blind, hear like the deaf, and feel like the paraplegics’ our senses will never be common but none existent. Open your eyes and see, listen carefully to all that is around you, and let your hearts feel what your hands cannot. Then perhaps you too will have that sense you feel others are lacking.
Simply my thoughts
Dean Butler
