MISUNDERSTOOD
Helps to Happiness ~ Father John Carr, C.SS.R.
So you and your friend understand each other perfectly, do you? No, you don’t. Because you can’t. (Lest you should now misunderstand me in this matter, I am going to suppose you are a man—not a woman—and that your friend is of the same persuasion).
Now I don’t mean to say that you are to look on your most intimate friends as potential swindlers and cut-throats. Still, no man understands another perfectly, and about those we think we know best we can make huge and tragic mistakes.
In other words, misunderstanding people is always a possibility, and the misunderstood are distressingly numerous.
It is true that some set out to be misunderstood. To be looked upon as a “mystery man” can prove an asset and be rather good fun. There is an enjoyable sense of power in being able to hood-wink people and set them guessing about you.
Some men love to go through life wearing the mask of mystery. Like other masks, it may fall off and reveal little behind it. What was thought to be mystery was just mystification.
Unfortunately, the mask worn by the misunderstood is forced on most of them by all sorts of circumstances, often with very unpleasant consequences to themselves. Let us take a few instances.
Some people are the victims of physical suffering which, for various reasons, they keep to themselves. Their life is being gnawed out of them, and their little world of friends knows nothing about it.
They try to smile and be pleasant when tears would come easier. In this they don’t always succeed and a snappishness of manner becomes more or less a habit, regretted by none more than by themselves. They are misunderstood.
Others have worries which they will not or cannot speak of. This may result in their appearing selfishly wrapped up in themselves and unfeeling, when, were the truth known, it would be found that they were quite the reverse.
Their mind is preoccupied, their heart is shackled by these hidden anxieties, and all the while they would ask for nothing better than to expend on those about them the sympathy and kindness they know are theirs. They are misunderstood.
Others are by nature shy and are victims of what is called in the jargon of the day an inferiority complex. They are tied up by all sorts of phobias and inhibitions unexplained and often unexplainable.
Now this they try to meet in a sort of desperation by a brusqueness and assertiveness of manner entirely foreign to them and wrongly attributed to a temperament which is not theirs. These are misunderstood.
Others are more conscientious than their neighbors–some even scrupulously so—in certain matters pertaining, e.g., to justice, charity, modesty and the like, and are set down as narrow-minded, close-fisted, prudish. They are just following their conscience, not their natural inclinations. These are misunderstood.
Now for all such people life can be most unpleasant. It can even be a slow martyrdom. Being misunderstood can poison all their social relationships. They feel they are playing a distasteful part. They know they are missing many of the amenities of life. They realize that they are misread, misinterpreted, viewed from a wrong angle, that their true selves are not known; and they can do little or nothing about it. They have often to walk a hard dark road alone.
The world is full of these masked, misunderstood people, and it would be well for us not to forget it.
We may not always go by appearances. With truth has Shakespeare written: “There is no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.”
The happiest of faces can hide much physical anguish. The most unruffled of faces can hide devouring worries. The bluntest of manners can hide great kindness and the simplicity of a child. In view of all this, we tread on dangerous ground when we judge the motives and behavior of others. We may be utterly mistaken. What is more, we may be reading our own evil selves into others.
Naturally, the misunderstood fall a ready prey to what are called rash judgments. What is a rash judgment? It is a fixed conclusion we come to against another without sufficient grounds.
Suppose I saw a man issuing unsteadily from a pub and in his progress along the street describing arcs usually associated with the gyrations of skaters, there would be no rashness in my concluding that he had taken one too many.
On the other hand, were I to meet a stranger with a ruby nose, it would be rash of me to write him down a drunkard, since this particular condition of his nose could be accounted for in quite an innocent way.
Charity of course does not rule out caution and commonsense. I am not bound to swallow every story I hear about a man having lost his return ticket, or to suppose that every tramp who whines out a doleful tale belongs to the great army of the “misunderstood.” Nor need I in the name of charity allow my heart-strings or my purse-strings to be unreasonably stretched.
Apart from such cases, however, it is fundamental Christianity not to condemn others rashly. Christ says something startling in its implications: “Judge not, and you shall not be judged.”
It looks like getting a cheap ticket for heaven. However, when we recall what it costs us at times to put a good construction on the actions of others, the ticket may prove to be more expensive than we thought.
Even when we can’t excuse the actions of others, let us excuse the intentions, which often lie so deep and are so hard to see. We may be deceived, but what odds?
“Charity,” says St. Augustine, “is not much put out when it makes a mistake and thinks well of what is really evil.” And we are all so prejudiced! Give a dog a bad name and hang him. Once we get a wrong idea about anybody into our head it is hard to dislodge it.
“Can anything that is good come from Nazareth?” was the grumbling question when it was known that Christ came from there.
Give a dog a bad name and hang him. For he has little chance of surviving his evil reputation. How true!
But if all those among us who bear a “bad name” truly deserved such a fate, would there even be enough rope to go around?
In this troubled world we need the prayers of children. Their souls are innocent, their petitions special in the Eyes of God. Let us get our children on their knees, and with fervor and the remarkable confidence of a child, let us get them to pray for our families, our country, our world…..
The true Christian home is an altar of sacrifice and a theater of comedies and drama; It is a place of work and a haven of rest. If yours is a true Christian home, it is like a little church, where the family daily joins together in beautiful devotions- the family rosary, family night prayers and the Act of Consecration to the Sacred Heart… If you enjoy this video , please Like and Subscribe.
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