Monday, October 7, 2013

Would You Take This Advice?


By Rev. Robin Gray
Minister, Unitarian Universalist Church of Tallahassee


There is some advice that’s worth a second look, perhaps only to become more thoroughly confused by the original intent of the advice giver, or by the advice itself.

Sleep tight. Don’t let the bed bugs bite. Well, if this isn’t a mixed message, I don’t know what is. How is a child supposed to sleep after being tucked in with that opposition of phrases? Not only does she have to work at outsmarting the monsters hiding beneath the bed skirts, and the monster that lives in the closet, she has to worry about unseen threats that live somewhere in the mattress.

Now, I knew from a very early age that I could escape the monsters of the darkest places in my room by tucking the sheets firmly in place and never, ever letting my legs or arms stray over the side of the bed. But, once I was wound up into the bedclothes, I had to start worrying about ways to stop bed bugs from biting. I could conjure up images of the monsters I feared, but, I wasn’t at all sure what a bed bug looked like, or what its habits were. Did it only bite at night? Did it dine on children? Would sleeping ward them off, or egg them on? With all those questions animating my overactive worry-center, I’m amazed I got any sleep at all before the age of 24.

For those who want to know the entire ditty, it goes something like this:  “Good night, sleep tight. Don’t let the bed bugs bite. Wake up bright In the morning light to do what’s right with all your might.” 


Look before you leap. This advice, offered by the same woman who asked me — more than once — “If your best friend jumped off the Empire State Building, would you do it, too?” implies that there is a time for leaping. I guess it’s just not when your friends are leaping. I’m not sure why one would give any child even tacit advice to leap. Leaping is not something children need to be told to do, they seem to have the idea of jumping off dangerous precipices down pat. Looking is, I suppose, a bit of cautionary advice designed to make the potential jumper pause and consider the wisdom of this particular step into nothingness. However, if your best friend is already down there yelling, “Come on, you can do it!” rare is the child who will stop to look for the nearest set of stairs.

Let tomorrow take care of itself. I know this excellent advice that offers an exit from the endless round of worrying. It’s a Buddhist kind of advice, and it might help many people to let go of the need to control the future. But...on the other hand...I’ve had over 50 years of waking up tomorrow, and not once has tomorrow actually taken care of itself. I still need to show up, play my best game, and be present in the today that tomorrow has become. I think it might be more to the point to say, “Do today what needs to be done today.”

Work hard and you’ll get ahead. I know plenty of people who work hard never seem to get ahead. At another glance, I can’t help but wonder all sorts of things when I hear this advice. For instance: Who is it we are supposed to get ahead of? If we ‘get ahead’ does that mean that somebody else will get left behind? If I work hard and get ahead of my boss and become her boss, did I do something good along the way, or did I get ahead just because it had to be done? Is there an intrinsic value in ‘getting ahead’ or should work be tied to a moral or ethical imperative?

As I look back, I can see that sound bites that ignore the heart of the matter were invented long before their supposed appearance in a June 1980 Washington Post admonition to journalists: “Remember that any editor watching needs a concise, 30-second sound bite. Anything more than that, you’re losing them.”

The 30-second philosophers have been hard at work for generations reducing the complex into simple, easy to repeat phrases that may be meaningless or even negative. With that, I can only say, “Good night. Sleep tight. Beware of every sound bite.