That Speck on the Windshield

You are flying your small airplane on a beautiful day.

There is a tiny speck on your windshield.

Like the North Star, it doesn’t move.

This is why it escapes your notice.

Had that speck begun moving across your windshield, you would have recognized it as another airplane. The fact that it doesn’t move means that you and that speck will soon intersect unless one of you changes direction. That speck will quickly-all-at-once fill your windshield and then…

I’m trying to teach you a new way of thinking about your blind spot.

If you knew it was there, they wouldn’t call it a blind spot.

Blind spots are why it is wise for you and me to each have a special person in our lives to notice things we don’t notice. You would be amazed at the number of times each week Princess Pennie has to point out specks on the windshield I didn’t see.

Right now, you are thinking to yourself, “What the wizard just told us completely contradicts Indy Beagle’s assertion last week that, ‘Nothing is so annoying as unsolicited advice, for within it lies the assumption of superior wisdom.'”

I’m not contradicting Indy, I’m just pointing out a speck on his windshield. Each of us – you, me, everyone – is limited in our perceptions. But we don’t like to believe we are.

Time-travel with me:

In the second chapter of the first book of the Bible, God muses to himself, “It is not good for a person to be alone.”

I think this is why He made so many of us, and why we are so different.

Solomon, widely known for his wisdom, wrote, “Two are better than one…If one falls down, his partner can help him up. But pity the person who falls and has no one to help him up!” 1

And in the Proverbs, he wrote, “Whoever finds a partner finds a good thing.” 2

On page 148 of the book that won her the Nobel Prize in Literature,3 Olga Tokarczuk writes,

“The world here is so large, so impossible to take in,” she said, fixing her gaze on me for a few seconds, testing me, “Agata is my wife.”

I blinked, I had never heard one woman referring to another as “my wife” before. But I liked it.

“You’re surprised, aren’t you?”

I thought for a while.

“I could have a wife, too,” I said with conviction. “It’s better to live with someone than alone. It’s easier to go through life together with someone than on one’s own.”

Allow me to conclude by revisiting your accusation that today’s Monday Morning Memo contradicts last week’s Monday Morning Memo written by Indy Beagle.

Niels Bohr, the physicist who won the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physics, said,

“The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.”

Please note that Niels Bohr was a physicist, not a philosopher.

Stanislaw Lec, however, was a philosopher. He confirmed Niels Bohr’s thesis about opposite truths by saying, “Proverbs contradict each other. That is the wisdom of a people.” 4

F. Scott Fitzgerald, the writer who gave us The Great Gatsby, summarized the idea of opposite truths this way, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

Yes, F. Scott was a drunkard, but that doesn’t mean he was wrong. Alcohol was a speck on his windshield. Sadly for F. Scott, that speck quickly-all-at-once filled his windshield when he was just 44 years old.

I’m betting if he had it all to do over again, he would have let someone help him wipe that speck away.

Roy H. Williams

1 Ecclesiastes 4:9-10

2 Proverbs 18:22 [Yeah, I wrote “partner” when Solomon said “wife.” Don’t have a conniption. A person doesn’t have to be your spouse – or even female – to point out the speck on your windshield. – RHW]

3 Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, p. 148

4 I’ve put 30 examples of “proverbs contradicting each other” in the rabbit hole for you. – Indy