Jackie DeShannon told us, via lyrics by Hal David, over sixty years ago that what the world needs now is love, sweet love. How true and how truly sentimental. Take a moment to let that Bacharach melody worm into your brain, and you’re likely to be weaving in time to the music before you hear the next line in your head. If it’s in Dionne Warwick’s voice, that’s just fine. Now sing it with me. “It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.”
Now switch that brain circuitry to conjure Suzanne Sugerbaker’s voice. “Excuse me. Excuse me. That’s the ONLY thing that there’s just too little of? What kind of hippie-dippie nonsense is that?”
Now, I’m not saying love isn’t in short supply, but I do think there are some other human commodities that seem to be getting as hard to find as toilet paper before a Texas ice storm.
Let’s start with empathy. I readily admit to being somewhat empathy-challenged myself, but even I recognized that the ability to understand and share the feelings of others was in for a hard time when Elon Musk declared empathy to be “the fundamental weakness of Western Civilization” on Joe Rogan’s podcast. It was such a surprise he said that, considering I didn’t know he was from West Africa.
Also becoming increasingly more rare is the practice of critical thinking. To paraphrase an unattributed quote, this problem is the result of people being educated just enough to believe what they’ve been taught, but not educated enough to question what they’ve been taught. I can totally identify with that one, as I attended American history classes in the South as well as Vacation Bible School.
That’s a pretty good quote from someone unknown, but it seems to assume that thinking critically is something we poor mortals must be trained to do. I am quite sure that there are folks who never darkened the door of an institution of higher learning who have better critical thinking skills than some of those flashing sheepskins from some of our most elite colleges and universities.
But the insufficiency I really want to talk about is the dearth of perspective that seems to afflict more and more of us almost every day. It is a personal challenge for me.
There are different kinds of perspective, of course. Karl will tell you that I lack perspective when it comes to depth perception, which is true when it comes to something like driving. If I’m turning left into my driveway in front of oncoming traffic, I’m not all that good at figuring out how far away that car is, how fast it’s going, and whether or not I can cross in front of that driver without getting broadsided. If there’s any doubt, I’ll just wait.
I also have no sense of how far it is from here to there. Is it thirty feet to that wall? Twenty? I just don’t know. When it comes to feet and yards, I have no clue. However, I should get some credit for being able to differentiate between ceramic tiles. It is easy for me to recognize those that are six or eight inches square from those that are, say ten or twelve inches.
Keeping things in perspective these days is at least as hard as keeping one’s sense of humor. As Clairee Belcher taught on that bench after Shelby’s funeral, when things get too serious, we need to laugh. There are commentators on cable news, folks on TikTok and the like, even regular folks posting on social media, and all I think is how long has it been since they had a good laugh. Or a good lay. Or both.
“Life is just a bowl of cherries. Don’t take it serious; it’s too mysterious.” Of course, that’s an old song introduced as the Great Depression was getting deeper and deeper. But the song isn’t about shirking responsibility. It’s about one’s attitude in dealing with life. That is to say, it’s about perspective.
Perhaps it would better suit my preference if that song referred to a bowl of peaches, as I prefer them to cherries. But cherries or peaches, the good stuff is all around a pit. But isn’t it worth dealing with the pit to get that good stuff?
If I think about it, critically think about it, the answer is yes. On those days when I lose a bit of grip on that perspective, there’s always Judy Garland to sing me back to where I need to be.
