'Different Drummers' and 'God Whispers'
If you do not want what I want, please try not to tell me that my want is wrong.
Or if my beliefs are different from yours, at least pause before you set out to correct them.
Or if my emotions seems less or more intense than yours, given the same circumstances, try not to ask me to feel other than I do.
Or if I act, or fail to act, in the manner of your design for action, please let me be.
I do not, for the moment at least, ask you to understand me. That will come only when you are willing to give up trying to change me into a copy of you.
If you will allow me any of my own wants, or emotions, or beliefs, or actions, then you open yourself to the possibility that some day these ways of mine might not seem so wrong, and might finally appear as right--for me. To put up with me is the first step to understanding me.
Not that you embrace my ways as right for you, but that you are no longer irritated or disappointed with me for my seeming waywardness. And one day, perhaps, in trying to understand me, you might come to prize my differences, and, far from seeking to change me, might preserve and even cherish those differences.
I may be your spouse, your partner, your offspring, your friend, your colleague. But whatever our relation, this I know: You and I are fundamentally different and both of us have to march to our own drummer.“Let me tell you the most beautiful story I know.
A man was given a dog, which he loved very much.
The dog went with him everywhere,
But the man could not teach it to do anything useful.
The dog would not fetch or point,
It would not race or protect or stand watch.
Instead the dog sat near him and regarded him,
Always with the same inscrutable expression.
‘That’s not a dog, it’s a wolf,’ said the man’s wife.
‘He along is faithful to me,’ said the man,
and his wife never discussed it with him again.
One day the man took his dog with him into his private airplane
And as they flew over high winter mountains,
The engines failed
And the airplane was torn to shreds among the trees.
The man lay bleeding,
His belly torn open by blades of sheared metal,
Steam rising from his organs in the cold air,
But all he could think of was his faithful dog.
Was he alive? Was he hurt?
Imagine his relief when the dog came padding up
And regarded him with that same steady gaze.
After an hour the dog nosed the man’s gaping abdomen,
Then began pulling out intestines and spleen and liver
And gnawing on them,
All the while studying the man’s face.
‘Thank God,’ said the man.
‘At least one of us will not starve.’”
From The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao
Or if my beliefs are different from yours, at least pause before you set out to correct them.
Or if my emotions seems less or more intense than yours, given the same circumstances, try not to ask me to feel other than I do.
Or if I act, or fail to act, in the manner of your design for action, please let me be.
I do not, for the moment at least, ask you to understand me. That will come only when you are willing to give up trying to change me into a copy of you.
If you will allow me any of my own wants, or emotions, or beliefs, or actions, then you open yourself to the possibility that some day these ways of mine might not seem so wrong, and might finally appear as right--for me. To put up with me is the first step to understanding me.
Not that you embrace my ways as right for you, but that you are no longer irritated or disappointed with me for my seeming waywardness. And one day, perhaps, in trying to understand me, you might come to prize my differences, and, far from seeking to change me, might preserve and even cherish those differences.
I may be your spouse, your partner, your offspring, your friend, your colleague. But whatever our relation, this I know: You and I are fundamentally different and both of us have to march to our own drummer.“Let me tell you the most beautiful story I know.
A man was given a dog, which he loved very much.
The dog went with him everywhere,
But the man could not teach it to do anything useful.
The dog would not fetch or point,
It would not race or protect or stand watch.
Instead the dog sat near him and regarded him,
Always with the same inscrutable expression.
‘That’s not a dog, it’s a wolf,’ said the man’s wife.
‘He along is faithful to me,’ said the man,
and his wife never discussed it with him again.
One day the man took his dog with him into his private airplane
And as they flew over high winter mountains,
The engines failed
And the airplane was torn to shreds among the trees.
The man lay bleeding,
His belly torn open by blades of sheared metal,
Steam rising from his organs in the cold air,
But all he could think of was his faithful dog.
Was he alive? Was he hurt?
Imagine his relief when the dog came padding up
And regarded him with that same steady gaze.
After an hour the dog nosed the man’s gaping abdomen,
Then began pulling out intestines and spleen and liver
And gnawing on them,
All the while studying the man’s face.
‘Thank God,’ said the man.
‘At least one of us will not starve.’”
From The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao